


Narcissa Triumphant

by Lomonaaeren



Series: Narcissa Militant [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Assassins & Hitmen, BAMF Narcissa Black Malfoy, Crack, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2019-07-29 19:19:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16270679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: Narcissa has a war on two fronts to fight, with Voldemort and with the Ministry. But when winning such wars is necessary to avenge her family and keep them safe, her enemies are the ones who will regret their actions.





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Seventh in this series. Make sure to read the others first.

****“I don’t understand why we’ve waited this long to get back at the Ministry.”

Narcissa finished signing her name to the parchment with a final flourish, folded up the letter, and turned to make her way to the Owlery. Draco stared at her for a moment, then fell into step beside her. “Didn’t you hear me, Mother? I asked—”

“You did not ask, Draco. You whinged. And given that the answer should be perfectly obvious, I am less than inclined to give it to you.”

Draco flushed, the pale hectic flush that always made him look as if he’d broken out in spots. Narcissa sighed a little. It was possible to teach one’s children to resist the impulse to blush when they lied, but not to blush more gracefully. It was a fact she had often regretted.

“Fine.” Draco swallowed the air he would have used to make a protest and spent the rest of the journey meditating on what he needed to think about. Narcissa smiled down at him, although he showed no sign of noticing. He was much quicker to learn than he had been as a young child.

They reached the Owlery, and Narcissa held out the letter. The first bird that swooped over to claim it was a great gray, and Narcissa examined him critically before she nodded. It was not essential that this letter pass discreetly through the air, after all.

The owl hooted softly and took off through the window. Draco cleared his throat, and Narcissa turned to look at him expectantly.

“You waited this long because you want to attack the Ministry with allies and have a say in the election of the new Minister, and you needed time to arrange it.”

“Excellent, Draco.” His chest still puffed out a little too far when she praised him, but then, she doled out the praise with a stingier hand now that he was nearly seventeen. “Yes. I intend to _destroy_ the Ministry when my blow lands, not merely faze them or shake them or smear their reputation as I smeared Auror Williams’s.”

Draco sneered automatically at the name of the biased Auror who had tried to insist that Harry had committed the murder of Amelia Bones. “But one thing I don’t understand, Mother.” He waited for her to nod before he spoke again. “How are you going to destroy something so powerful? And what about the chaos that would erupt when it falls? How in the world can we have a government if you destroy it?”

“Oh, certain structures will still stay in place,” Narcissa told him, reaching out to stroke the head of Harry’s snowy owl as she hopped along the perch towards Narcissa. Hedwig was fond of Narcissa for helping her master, and Narcissa was fond of Hedwig for being beautiful. It was an interesting mutual relationship. “The Wizengamot, the Aurors, some of the judicial process. But new _people_ will be occupying those spots.”

“You’re going to make Scrimgeour Minister, aren’t you?”

Narcissa turned around sharply. Sirius had asked her that the other day, but he hadn’t been serious; he liked to fling out the names of what he thought were silly candidates and make people laugh. No one had worked his way to the heart of the truth like Draco had.

Draco only shrugged. “I can read between the lines, Mother. You’ve exchanged a lot of letters with him and invited him over for dinner in a way that you haven’t done for anyone else.”

Narcissa relaxed. Now that she thought about it, why should Draco _not_ have guessed? Lucius had not because he knew, Harry was busier than ever with his training this summer, and Sirius did not live with them. “Very well, Draco. Yes. He’s the only combination I’ve found of reliable, sensible, and accepting.”

“Accepting?”

“Accepting of manipulation instead of bribes. Everyone else either wants much more money than I’m prepared to part with, or proudly declares that they’ll stand on their own for the sake of principle and accept no Galleons at all.”

Draco sneered again as he followed her down the steps from the Owlery. Narcissa made a note to give him some lessons in that, as well. Right now, the sneer distorted his face too much. “You do have your own standards of what is acceptable, Mother.”

“I do. And they are the ones that matter.”

Draco ducked his head. “I didn’t mean to challenge…”

“You didn’t.” Narcissa sighed as she stepped back into the dining room where Sirius would be joining them for dinner that evening. “I have some reasons to be on edge, some problems that I have not yet solved. Do not worry about them, Draco. They do not concern you.”

Draco studied her with raised eyebrows anyway. Then he asked, “Is it Voldemort, or is it some of your allies?”

Narcissa flickered a glance at him. Draco stood there and let it bounce off him. Narcissa resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Sometimes I think I raised you too well.” Draco only grinned, so she said, “Allies. The curse I cast on him is killing Voldemort, or at least breaking his ability to hold onto this body. Once he becomes a wraith again, he will be much less dangerous, even if we have to spend some time killing him.”

“But don’t your allies fear you?”

“Yes, but it has been many years since I did them favors or reminded them of my powers, and some of them want to wait and see what happens. Others think they can take bribes from me _and_ the Ministry.” Narcissa shook her head. She would not say that she had stupid allies, but she had some that were too addicted to playing the political field. They would insist on waiting and watching, just in case a better deal came along, even if that was monumentally unlikely.

And if the Ministry collapsed on their heads, then they would rush to her side, when it was too late.

“What are you going to do about them?”

“For now, the Horcruxes are my priority.” Narcissa stretched. She had a potion to brew and consume before she could go after her next target. And she wanted to get at least one full night of sleep, unbroken by owls coming in with letters from Scrimgeour, Sirius, or her allies.

“Can I help?”

“If you want to start dicing some of the ingredients I’ve left on the table in the lab, then I would appreciate it. I’m going to take a nap.”

Draco opened his mouth, then closed it without speaking. Or, at least, speaking until Narcissa was more than halfway up the grand staircase. “Is Harry going to be coming with you when you hunt the next one?”

“No.”

That seemed to be all Draco needed, because the next sound Narcissa heard was that of her lab door shutting. She gave a thin smile as she climbed the stairs. Yes, things would work out. She only needed to be faster, stronger, and cleverer than her enemies.

And that had never been a problem.

*

Narcissa stood in the middle of a circle that Lucius’s ancestors had imprinted into the floor of this particular Potions lab. It was made of gleaming copper and set along the edges with gleaming topazes and turquoises. Not the usual sorts of precious stones that would be set along a circle like this, but then, the circle hardly had a usual purpose.

Narcissa closed her eyes. The circle around her still gleamed in her mind. She could have walked the whole border blind without tripping over one of the small jewels.

She heard the circle begin to rotate around her, the soft sound as it scraped through the tiles of the floor. The shimmering image in her mind extended upwards and outwards, forming first a rising circle, then a cone, pointing towards a distant target and waiting for her to give it the impetus to link there.

Narcissa cut her hand with a small silver knife. Potion-infused blood spilled down her palm and over the heel of her hand. The minute it hit the tiles, she knew it would begin to stream, drawn off to form small red circles around the jewels.

She didn’t open her eyes to watch it happen. It wasn’t necessary.

“Voldemort,” she said. “The one who calls himself Voldemort, who has the link to my blood. Find him for me.”

There was no response until every jewel was soaked in blood, the circle continuing to rotate to make it easier for that to happen. Then Narcissa saw an image forming in front of her, on the darkness of her closed eyelids, replacing the one of the circle.

Voldemort sat on a throne in a dilapidated house—well, dilapidated from the outside. Inside, he had spread the floors with rich rugs and hung the walls with flowing tapestries. Torches flared in the sconces on the walls. There were random piles of emeralds and rubies in various corners, as if to prove to his Death Eaters that he had all kinds of wealth.

Voldemort himself looked considerably leaner than he had the last time she had seen him. Narcissa smiled without moving her lips. He had managed to slow the starvation curse she had inflicted on him, or he would be dead already. But he could not manage to stop it.

He would die soon enough if she waited. But that would only make _this_ body die, and then he would be a bodiless wraith, with a choice of many more bodies around him to possess. No, the only way to kill him was to eliminate the Horcruxes.

Narcissa turned her head a little, sweeping the place with her magically enhanced gaze. Yes. In a corner, his serpent Nagini lay, watching her master.

Narcissa picked up the dagger that lay next to her on the floor with as little movement as possible. The connection of the circle was unique among magic—Narcissa had been thrilled when she had first discovered it, since it was evidence that Lucius’s ancestors had not always been as stupid as they seemed—but it was fragile. Narcissa would break it if she moved too much, or if the blood that had encircled the jewels dried on even one of them.

She had the dagger ready. Narcissa took a deep breath, and said, “The blood binds me to Voldemort. The shared soul binds Voldemort and his serpent. I ask for the connections of the blood and the soul to work for me now.”

The magic of the circle shimmered around her, considering it.

Narcissa touched her wand to the dagger and cast the incantation for Fiendfyre.

The flames that roared up around her backlit the image of Voldemort and Nagini with shapes of leaping lions, leopards, and dragons in scarlet and gold. Voldemort jerked and turned his head around as if he had heard something.

He didn’t have time to react, if he really had. Narcissa closed her eyes more firmly, the better to watch what happened when the circle sent all of this through, and channeled the Fiendfyre into the dagger and the blood link.

There was more roaring in her ears than she had ever heard in her life, as if she had somehow stumbled into an inferno. Narcissa kept her head, calmly sending the incredible magic into the link that bound her to Voldemort. She was relatively sure that she heard him scream, and she smiled, very slightly.

The sparking and popping of the fire streamed down the blood link, and for a second, Voldemort glowed as if lit from within. Narcissa forced her will onto the Fiendfyre, which wanted to devour the fragile human body that he had entrenched himself into, and forced it to spread to Nagini.

The snake began to thrash and utter what Narcissa suspected were screams in Parseltongue, although of course she couldn’t be absolutely sure. She watched in amusement as the writhing became slower and slower and at last died, and at the same moment, the shadow of what looked like a trembling human figure rose from the snake and seemed to take a single step before it, too, departed into smoke.

Voldemort began to scream in turn.

Narcissa found it boring to listen to. She broke the blood connection, and then the one with the dagger. When she opened her eyes, she found the streams of blood that led away from her to the jewels around the circle had almost dried. She had completed the ritual just in time.

She smiled as she went to work cleaning up the ritual tools and the traces of it; this was not a task she would entrust to house-elves. Yes, the Malfoys probably had the only circle in the world that would reach across distance and enable someone to kill or affect the target’s area magically without needing to go to it.

Her “Horcrux hunt” was never going to put her or her family at risk again if she could help it.

*

“You think Voldemort is going to target us more this year?”

Narcissa rested her hand on Harry’s shoulder and bent down towards him, even if their words _would_ mostly be lost in the rush of people towards the Hogwarts Express. “I think he probably has figured out by now that we’re targeting his Horcruxes.”

“Just from you killing Nagini?”

“It’s true that he doesn’t have ready access to the rest of them anymore,” Narcissa admitted. “At least, not to the diadem and the diary, and he never knew the one in you existed, so it’s unlikely that he knows of its destruction. But the locket and the cup? And whatever the seventh Horcrux is?”

“We’ve got to find out.”

“I do have the means to narrow it down.” Narcissa bent to kiss him on the brow, on the place where the lightning bolt scar had faded to the point where only someone who knew it was there could have seen it. “But I want you to concern yourself with protecting Draco and passing your NEWT’s.”

“I did well enough on the OWL’s.”

“Yes, but these are harder.”

Harry spent a moment staring at her, and then his mouth curled up in what looked like a reluctant smile. “All right. I’ll get on the train and think about the best ways to protect Draco, Mother.” He touched her cheek and walked away to a compartment.

Narcissa turned when someone pulled on her cloak. It was Draco, his face solemn as he studied her. “Did you hear that Professor McGonagall had to find another Defense teacher?”

“Even though the previous one is not dead?” Narcissa nodded. “I am not surprised.” The poison she had inflicted on Idunna Freyasdaughter had made her unable to go long without violent bouts of stomach upset—at both ends.

“It’s Moody.”

“Is it?” Narcissa did not allow herself to express more than polite shock. “I am surprised that he agreed to come out of retirement for any reason.”

Draco took another step towards her and lowered his voice. “I’m worried. The gossip says that he has a magical eye that can see through everything, even Invisibility Cloaks like the one Harry has, and he’s a close friend of Dumbledore’s. What if he knows some of the things Dumbledore wanted to do and tries to do them?” Not even here would he say aloud that Moody might know there had been a Horcrux in Harry, and might not believe that it had been removed. “Or what if he senses what we’re doing and tries to stop us?”

Narcissa touched his hair. Draco had grown up into such a handsome young man. Overly serious, some of the time, but so handsome. “I will handle this, Draco. I don’t want you worrying about it, do you hear me?”

“But, Mother—”

“I did say something about that I would not tolerate, Draco.”

Draco stared at her with narrowed eyes, then nodded. He followed Harry onto the train, and Narcissa turned back for the last farewell.

Lucius kissed her gently on the forehead, then the cheek, then the lips. A few passing adolescents hooted at them. Lucius ignored them graciously. He would have been incapable of that last year, before Narcissa had destroyed most of his Dark Mark. Now it was three-fifths gone; she had done the third ritual over the summer.

“Go,” Lucius breathed into her ear. “Be safe. I will be working the political end of things. Already I have any number of people lined up who are tired of the Ministry.”

“We are a good team.”

“We are.” Lucius kissed her again, and backed off when Narcissa gave him a measured glance. Then he nodded to her and turned and walked away towards the entrance that led back to the fireplaces.

Narcissa put a smile on her face for the sake of anyone who was watching, and stepped onto the train. She almost bumped into a tall man with a wooden leg, who stared at her with a whirling blue magical eye.

 _Best to be prepared._ Narcissa smiled. “Professor Moody. I understand that you’re joining the Hogwarts staff this year.”

“Come with me, Malfoy.”

Narcissa sighed and followed the old Auror. She supposed that she shouldn’t have expected basic politeness from him.

It remained to be seen how soon she would teach him a lesson about respecting her.


	2. Moody

Narcissa followed Moody down the middle of the train. She could feel people muttering and staring at them. Narcissa ignored them efficiently. She had a relaxed way of moving that made it seem as if her hand wasn’t resting on her wand, and her eyes fastened on the precise point of Moody’s body that would show the most movement if he turned and hurled a curse at her. She was going to keep herself safe.

And keep her sons safe, as well.

They finally reached an empty compartment at the far end of the train. Moody gestured her through the door first. Narcissa smiled at him and stepped past. She heard him grumble under his breath, but he didn’t attack.

 _A good thing, for him,_ Narcissa thought idly, and cast a few detection spells on the inside of the compartment. Nothing showed up to her eyes, ears, nose, or other senses. She turned around and watched Moody slide the door closed.

“You know why I want to speak to you, Professor Malfoy.”

“No, actually. If you sent me an owl, it went astray. What is this about, Auror Moody?”

He stared at her long enough to be slightly unnerving, then grunted and scratched his head. “It’s Professor Moody now, same as you. I’m taking over the Defense Against the Dark Arts position this year.”

Narcissa nodded and smiled faintly. “Well, then. At least my sons will have a qualified instructor in that subject for once.”

Moody stared at her as if he didn’t know how to take that. Then he hardened his gaze and said, “I’m aware that you used Dark Arts in the past.”

“I know. I have mostly given them up, you know. Not a lot of use in Astronomy for them. There are a few rituals that I do in the privacy of my own home which still require them.”

“I meant _in the school._ I want to know why you would do that, when you’re supposed to be instructing our students. Protecting them. Keeping them safe from the Dark.” Moody angled his body in such a way that he could easily hurt her.

Well, he could hurt the woman she _appeared_ to be, the defenseless Astronomy Professor with only a few O’s in magic that was meant to teach instead of harm. Narcissa had no intention of allowing him to strike her, of suffering such a humiliation, but for now there was more worth in holding onto the facade. She let her eyes widen. “What did I do to students last year? No one told me that I was suspected!”

“Had it from the mouth of someone who knows exactly what you did,” Moody said, and his voice was gravelly with pleasure. “She’ll die soon herself, but she wanted someone to know the truth first. Someone who could do something about it.”

 _Idunna._ Narcissa was honestly surprised the woman had lived until the point that she could contact Moody. Well, only her strength of will was dismaying. Narcissa knew that if she had done nothing to take revenge on Idunna, the curse on the Defense position would have struck her, and she would have blamed Narcissa, because that was what Light witches and wizards tended to do.

“Well? Not going to react to the accusation?”

“I would have expected an arrest, from an Auror. Not just an accusation.”

Moody hesitated for the first time. “Doesn’t meet Auror standards of proof,” he finally muttered. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t have an eye on you, Professor Malfoy.”

Narcissa nodded calmly. Yes, prejudice had made Idunna accuse her, and prejudice had made Moody believe her. It was only coincidence that Narcissa was _actually_ responsible for this particular use of Dark Arts. “Well. You may watch me all you like. I have absolutely no intention of endangering our students. Good day, now, Professor Moody. The Headmistress does like me to patrol the train and make sure that no students are getting in trouble or escaping the notice of the prefects.”

Moody didn’t move. Narcissa gave him a patient sigh, and still it didn’t move him. “I don’t know if I should let you into the school like this,” he said. “Not fit to employ a professor who admits to using the Dark Arts. Not right.”

“You said that you didn’t have a standard of proof that would satisfy any Auror except you.”

The insult buried in those words sailed right past him, as Narcissa had suspected it would. He continued to stare at her suspiciously. “You admitted to using ‘em at home.”

“And that is not a crime,” said Narcissa, who on this point knew the law better than the Aurors. “Not for small matters of heritage and rituals that involve all consenting parties.”

“How do _I_ know they were consenting?”

Narcissa laughed. “Well, if you want to question my husband about the rituals employed in our bedroom, then you can.” In fact, the last removal of a piece of the Dark Mark had indeed taken place in their bedroom.

Starting back, Moody stared at her before his face flooded with color. “Didn’t say I needed to know _that,_ ” he complained.

“Well, that’s the risk you take when you question someone about _private_ matters.” Narcissa was delighted to see that her emphasis on the word made Moody actually stumble back from her, his hands lifted as if to ward her away. Narcissa let out a soft chuckle and swished towards the compartment door. Moody stepped away from her as if she would suddenly start humping his leg.

“I’ll find out the Dark Arts you use in school.”

“I don’t use them there, Professor Moody.”

“Whatever was killing Professor Freyasdaughter—”

“She spent a lot of time around Dark magic in the pursuit of her post,” Narcissa said, turning her head to give Moody one more glimpse of her patrician profile. It might be an education for him, poor man. He didn’t _have_ to be so craggy. “I hope you know better than to blame me for that.”

Moody didn’t reply, and Narcissa stepped into the corridor. She still smiled as she began the patrol that Minerva did ask of her and which she remembered when it was convenient.

Moody was going to be fun to disconcert.

*

Draco was quiet enough that Narcissa would have suspected something was wrong even if she wasn’t specifically watching for it. He didn’t even respond to the soft teasing Harry was giving him about something in their NEWT Charms class that day. He watched her with a carefully blank face.

Narcissa granted his wish and asked him about it half an hour after he and Harry had arrived in her quarters. “What is it, darling?”

Draco gave only a shade of his usual wince at being called darling. “We had our first Defense Against the Dark Arts class today.”

“Will I need to continue my tradition of murdering your Defense teachers?”

“Oi,” Harry said mildly, not looking up from the blade he was polishing. “One of those murders was mine.”

Narcissa smiled at him. “So it was.”

“Moody gave us a lecture about the first war,” Draco said, his body tense and hunched in on itself. Narcissa put aside her marking to study him. He was far more tense than she had anticipated. “Some of the—the massacres that happened. I didn’t know about them. And he said that we had students in the class who were related to the people that caused those massacres, and people who were related to the victims that died, and he knew who _his_ sympathies were with.” Draco dragged a breath out of the bottom of his chest and stared at her. “Mother, was Father as much a monster as all that? I never knew.”

She stood, careful not to move too quickly, and walked over to crouch down in front of him. “Not a monster, Draco. Someone who did things that he should not have done, yes.”

“But—legally or morally? I mean, do you think that he shouldn’t have done those things because he could have been punished for them, or because he really _shouldn’t_ have done them? If he participated in killing the whole Bones family…”

Narcissa folded her legs underneath her. It seemed they would sit here for a while. And Harry was listening, too, from across the room, although his hands kept up their soft whisking motions across the blade.

“I do not actually think about things like that,” she told Draco. “Not in the same way that Moody does. Legalities do matter to me, but more because I need to know the laws that surround things like practicing the Dark Arts in Hogwarts or what aspects of the discipline I need to keep to myself no matter what and which I might reveal to trusted confidants. I’m not the best one to talk to you about this if you do feel your father did something wrong.”

“Legally wrong?”

“Remember that he was acquitted.”

“But—his being under the Imperius Curse was a lie.”

“Does that mean that he should pay now by going to Azkaban?”

Draco’s gaze strayed away from her, and Narcissa nodded. “It’s not the kind of question that you can answer as simply as Moody is asking you to answer it, Draco. Moody is good at upending a certain kind of moral righteousness. He’s always gone after some of the people in power. But he’s not good at handling other kinds. He’s not good, for example, at confronting the extremism of the Ministry in that time of war.”

“Extremism?” Draco’s voice was quiet, his hands folded in his lap and clutching each other as if he wanted to yank his fingers off.

“The Aurors were granted permission to use the Unforgivables. I don’t believe it’s ever been revoked. Sirius was sent to prison without a trial because that was what the hysteria of the times demanded. You could raise those examples in your next class, and Moody would brush them off. He’s not someone who faces _all_ kinds of injustice, Draco. Just the kinds he understands.”

“He was trying to get to Draco,” Harry said, apparently to the knife he was polishing. “The whole time he was speaking about the crimes of Death Eaters being excused after the first war, he was watching Draco. And then he turned around and spoke about the massacres directly to Susan Bones. I think he’s trying to set us against each other.”

“That would be a subtler way of imposing his will on the school than Idunna tried,” Narcissa murmured. “Did he try to influence you?”

“I think he doesn’t know how to deal with me.” Harry gave her a smile sharper than the knife he held. “He watched me the whole time he talked about both the pardons and the massacres, and I didn’t do anything. And of course he knows I’m your son. He might think I’m evil, or part of a secret resistance against you, or anything, really.”

“I’d like you to show slight reactions.”

“To what?”

“To everything. If he speaks about the murder of your parents—”

“One set of parents.”

Narcissa reached out and gently pressed Harry’s shoulder with the flat of her hand for a moment. Then she nodded and agreed, “One set of them. But react to everything, including that. Make it seem as if you know nothing or that you haven’t considered it deeply. I want him to talk to you, to see if he tries to persuade you. We might learn more about what his ultimate plans are that way.”

“Do you want me to try Legilimency on him if he gets close enough?”

“Draco is more delicate about Legilimency than you are,” Narcissa said dryly. _A rampaging Nundu is more delicate._ Harry had become good at Occlumency, but he seemed to like the direct attack too much to read minds with a subtle brush.

“I can do that,” Draco said, and he sounded a little more relaxed and a lot more confident. “I can do my best to wield my Legilimency against him.”

“We don’t know everything about his Occlumency defenses,” Narcissa cautioned them.

“I know, Mother, but I want to at least try.” Draco licked his lips. “He said that he was giving us things to think about when he was telling us the history of the war, but I don’t think he was. I think now that he was—trying to rattle me. I can’t believe that I let him get to me so badly.”

“You have no experience with this kind of manipulation,” Narcissa said. “And you _should_ form your own opinions about your father’s actions, and mine, and anything else that could matter to you. The point is that you should be doing so under the influence of your own mind, not your Defense teacher’s. Any more than you should trust and obey my every word.”

“I know who I think is smarter, between Moody and you,” Draco muttered. “I want to do what you want me to do.”

Narcissa inclined her head. She wanted her son to think independently, but it was true that that didn’t include him doubting her so badly that he stopped obeying her. “Then you might try little throbs of Legilimency against him, to see what happens. In the meantime, Harry, react. Let him think that you’re more in need of rescue because you’re a Gryffindor that we might have corrupted, and that he _could_ rescue you.”

“So we can find out more about what he wants, and whether he really is on any side at all?”

“Exactly,” Narcissa said, and watched both her sons smile at her. She would have felt sorry for Moody if such a thing was possible.

_They have learned better than he realizes._

*

Her Floo flared to life one evening a fortnight into the term, when Narcissa was alternating between marking largely worthless essays and taking notes on possible ways to get a Horcrux out of Gringotts, where she believed it might now be. Narcissa was on her feet in seconds, one hand on her wand.

The wards on the Floo hadn’t stopped the person on the other side from summoning up the fire at all, which gave her limited possibilities for who it could actually be.

“Narcissa—”

That was Lucius’s voice, with a wheezy gasp to it that showed he was running out of blood fast. His head appeared in the flames, but wavering back and forth in a way that showed he wasn’t in control of the call. “N-Narcissa—Voldemort is draining me—he wants the strength from my Mark to survive—”

There was enough of the Mark left that that could conceivably happen. Voldemort must at last have decided that Lucius’s loyalty was suspect.

“I am coming,” Narcissa said, her voice returning a calm expression to Lucius’s face for a second before it dissolved into a haze of pain.

The Floo connection dropped, but Narcissa grabbed her own jar of powder and opened another one. She charged straight through the hearth, ducking and rolling in a smooth motion. If Voldemort had gained enough control of Lucius, he might attempt to manipulate her husband’s body into attacking her.

Lucius was kneeling on the floor when she turned, and his arm was visibly throbbing and swelling. The snake in the Dark Mark was crawling down towards his wrist, and a black stain was spreading behind it.

Narcissa nodded, unsurprised. It would have been best if they could have waited and eliminated the two-fifths of the Dark Mark remaining piece by piece, as they’d planned on, but she had laid her contingencies for this possibility as well. She reached up and pulled her hair forwards so that it shielded her face.

“Narcissa—you can’t—”

There were times that she listened to Lucius and treasured his input. This wasn’t one of them. Narcissa Stunned him in a single easy motion and then knelt down next to him, watching the progress of the snake down his arm. She would need to strike when it had reached its fullest extension and pumped the most venom it could into Lucius.

She heard the thumping and shaking at the wards then, accompanied by multiple howls. Narcissa sighed. It was the night of the full moon. That was probably what Lucius had wanted to tell her, that there was a werewolf army attacking their home.

 _It will have to wait._ If Lucius died, the wards would fall anyway before they could latch on to Draco, since he wasn’t physically in the room. Narcissa reached out and curled her hands around Lucius’s wrist, waiting.

The snake’s head sank into Lucius’s wrist.

His entire forearm turned black.

Narcissa stabbed down with her knife straight into the Dark Mark.

Lucius’s body jolted under her, unconscious or not. Narcissa twisted the knife, and thick liquid began to pour out, too polluted to be called blood or even poison. Narcissa reached deep into Lucius’s veins and yanked, pulling, using the anchor of the knife to brace herself and forcing her magic through the marriage bond that she and Lucius shared.

 _He is mine, not Voldemort’s._ Her will sank deeper and deeper into his skin, deeper than the brand.

The Dark Mark fought back, but Narcissa had everything on her side: the blood link tying her to Voldemort and confusing the Mark because she had part of its creator within her, the calm matrices the discipline made in her head, blood magic she was prepared to use, the years she had lived with Lucius and how well she knew him. She had shed his blood before. She did it now, and forced his body to generate new blood that pulsed through his veins before they could collapse.

When she drew back at last, Lucius’s arm was covered with ash, blood, and what looked like viscera, but he would live.

Now she just had to deal with the werewolf army.


	3. A Werewolf Army

Narcissa stood up and moved towards the windows that looked out over the front gates of the Manor. She touched the panes, and a soft glow lit them and ran down to spark along her fingers. Narcissa looked at the glow in some amusement. It was testing to see if she was a Malfoy and could do as she’d just done.

“Defending yourself from the werewolves at your gates might seem more urgent right now,” she murmured.

As if the light had heard her, it turned rapidly into spinning gems of radiance around her fingers and then vanished. Narcissa looked through panes that now pierced the dark as if made of sunbeams, and showed her the vision at the gates even though the Manor sat well back from them.

Just outside the wards paced a howling horde of werewolves, all of them great shaggy beasts with mindless eyes. Narcissa counted them until it became obvious that counting was detrimental to her purpose. It just took up time. She did, however, find the biggest, greyest wolf in the front, pawing at the wards as he howled. Narcissa smiled a little as she drew her dagger and cut her arm in a jagged line.

“I wonder how long it will take you to run once you realize what I am, Fenrir Greyback,” she whispered.

The blood ran down the line of the dagger and dripped into the silver bowl Narcissa had already positioned beneath her elbow. There was a flash that seemed to travel throughout the house, this time, instead of only coming from the windows. Narcissa carefully healed the wound and scrubbed away the blood that still remained on her skin. Then she carried the bowl across the room and down the stairs, ignoring the clamoring howls and the sounds of furry bodies hitting the wards.

One could not rush perfection.

Narcissa stepped out into the middle of one of her workrooms. Lucius knew better than to intrude in here, and hadn’t even questioned the expense when she had the walls sheathed with black marble. Narcissa placed the silver bowl of blood on the plinth that stood in the middle of the room and closed her eyes.

A soft throb of magic ran through the floor beneath her. Narcissa smiled and reached out, eyes still closed, to a pinch of fresh mandrake, which she scattered into the blood.

The hammering on the wards grew distant. There was nothing of more importance than the magic her hands wove.

Into the blood went aconite and deadly nightshade, along with a crumb of curare that Narcissa had brought back from a trading adventure to a Peruvian marketplace long ago. She used her dagger to scoop that up. Then she stirred the blood with the same dagger, and called the face of Fenrir Greyback in wolf form firmly to mind.

She held the image there as she lifted her hand and drew the dagger across her own throat.

The blood flowed along the dagger and sealed itself, and Narcissa reached out to the image of the madly howling werewolf that was the only important thing in front of her mental eyes right now.

_I am the blood. I am willing to give my life to do this._

There was always a magic to sacrifice, a poetry to being willing to give one’s life—whether or not one gave it. Narcissa felt the great magic flow towards her, magic contained in the Manor. She couldn’t access that power that was only available to members of the family, but her own magic could resonate with the fact that spells had been worked inside these walls for generations.

And the Manor responded well to the intentions of someone who wanted to defend it, blood family or not.

The black walls around Narcissa began to glow. Floating from somewhere outside her body, she _sensed_ that more than she _knew_ it. She laughed, or she did what she could with her throat slit and her blood pooling along the dagger, and gathered the power deep inside herself, ready to fling.

The poisoned bowl of blood next to her stirred.

Narcissa reached out to it, more confidently, and spoke the link between magic and blood and poison and dagger and image. If she was willing to give up her life, then it should be for a _good_ cause. She should be able to _kill_ the way she wanted to. A way that had some elegance to it, and would use the maddened werewolf against his kin.

The blood flowed out in thin streams. Again Narcissa saw it with the eyes that were not the body’s eyes, but the eyes of her discipline. The streams soared through the door and out through other doors, around corners, down stairs, and finally across the Manor gardens. Then they arched over the top of the weakening wards and dripped onto the head of the wildly leaping Fenrir Greyback.

None of the other werewolves appeared to notice when their leader stopped leaping. None of them probably noticed that the quantity of froth dripping from his jaws was less than before.

But Narcissa noticed. Narcissa knew. She smiled and curled her fingers in towards her palms, breathing softly out.

_Kill._

Greyback turned and leaped upon the nearest werewolf. It only had time for a surprised shriek before Greyback killed it, biting through its neck with his teeth and pumping his envenomed saliva deep into its veins. The werewolf fell kicking and bleeding as Greyback jumped on another, and another. Some of them didn’t even try to defend themselves, they were so surprised. Others fled.

But a ring did turn on Greyback and surround him, snarling, and Narcissa knew that she couldn’t stay in his body when he was likely to die. She flickered her consciousness away to the marble-walled room again, and set about solving the small problem that she had cut her throat and was now bleeding to death.

Blood moved at her will, winding around the dagger and holding it against her throat like a temporary dam. Narcissa moved her magic calmly, reflecting off the walls, this time directing it to heal rather than make the poisoned blood flow towards Greyback.

The progress did seem to be slower than it otherwise would be, although that might be simply a reflection of the detached way that her spirit hovered back from her body. It might indicate a problem, as well.

Narcissa sighed. Sometimes she wondered why her body and her blood could not simply do as her will commanded them.

She channeled more magic. The marble on the walls amplified it, and it came beaming back to the wound in her throat like sunlight.

Narcissa felt her body sinking and settling, although it didn’t affect the hovering viewpoint that she enjoyed at the moment. The wound was healing steadily, but she had lost a lot of blood, she had to admit. It was annoying.

“Narcissa!”

And that was Lucius, having recovered faster than she had thought he would. Or perhaps he wasn’t fully recovered, Narcissa mused as she turned her spiritual body to face him. He still looked as pale as salt.

But he laid his own wand against her throat and spoke the words of a simple healing spell, and that helped. Narcissa sighed and released enough control that she got pulled into her body again. She drew a breath against the pain, and another, grateful that she could do so without the bubbling of blood within her wound.

“You—you didn’t need to do that,” Lucius whispered, kneeling next to her. “I could have taken control of the wards.”

“I thought you would be unconscious for the rest of the evening,” Narcissa retorted, holding out one hand. Lucius took it and helped her to a sitting position. Narcissa leaned on her husband’s shoulder for a moment. “Would you care to look through the windows and see how the werewolves are handling themselves?”

Lucius’s eyes unfocused as he turned his head, and then he chuckled nastily. “The only ones left are fighting each other. Most of them have fled. Then again, werewolves without the potion aren’t good at fixating on a goal. They need a leader.” He leaned more heavily against Narcissa, revealing that he was still tired. “And Fenrir Greyback appears to have been torn into at least five pieces.”

“Only five?”

Lucius had already fallen asleep again, sagging back against her. Narcissa sighed and called for the house-elves to help them into bed, grateful that she had a whole throat with which to do so.

*

“You’ve never missed breakfast before, Professor Malfoy.”

“Yes, but I’ve also never held off an army of werewolves before,” Narcissa said, and enjoyed the silence that came from Moody’s direction as she finished the plate of roasted chicken in front of her. After the kind of magic she had employed last night, she always craved meat.

“That’s impossible,” Moody finally said. “I would have heard about an army of werewolves.”

“Oh, not near Hogwarts,” Narcissa murmured, and finished her lunch and stood up. Her long nap this morning, although not disastrous since she taught her classes in the evening, meant she was behind on the pile of marking.

“An army of werewolves?”

Narcissa met Minerva’s gaze and smiled a little. “Yes. It seemed that Voldemort saw fit to attack my home.”

More silence was spreading. More professors were gaping at her. Narcissa wondered idly how many of them might be spies for Voldemort, even if blackmailed into it, the way Aurora Sinistra had been. Well, the poor darling had to get his news _somehow_.

“That shouldn’t be possible,” whispered Rolanda Hooch.

“It wouldn’t be possible without Dark magic.” Moody rose to his feet with a clatter from his wooden leg. “What did you _do_ , Professor Malfoy?”

“Saved my home,” Narcissa said, and walked away from the fool. She understood why Minerva had wanted to hire an Auror, but it could have been someone with a more flexible view of the world.

Moody clattered after her, and caught up with her once they were out of the Great Hall. “I cannot condone Dark magic—”

“Not used by the Ministry?”

“Not _ever_ ,” Moody snarled at her, and limped around in front of her. Narcissa sighed. That was part of the problem that came with slitting one’s own throat the night before. Not even the discipline could enable her to move fast enough to avoid being cornered yet. “You can’t play with the Dark Arts and expect to remain untainted!”

Narcissa leaned towards him. “I find it _interesting_ that you are more concerned with what I did than with who sent those werewolves against us, and what they would have done if they had succeeded in attacking my home,” she whispered.

Moody dismissed that with a flick of his hand. “You-Know-Who is going to do what he’s going to do. But _you_ ought to know better.”

Narcissa shook her head. “His name is Voldemort. Should I believe that you are a Death Eater since you can’t say it?”

Moody jerked back from her. Narcissa resumed her interrupted walk, and knew that he was standing there and watching her go instead of trying to follow.

He did shout when she was mostly up the staircase that led to the first floor, “ _Going_ to find out if you used the Dark Arts!”

“Going to find out if you knew about the Headmaster’s plans,” Narcissa said over her shoulder. She thought it possible. Moody had been part of Dumbledore’s Order of the Phoenix, and his close friend.

Moody didn’t seem to know what she was talking about. At least, his silence behind her was baffled. Narcissa smiled a little and entered her quarters.

Her sons stood up from the couch in the center of the room and advanced on her. Narcissa studied them for a moment. “Yes?” she asked, as Draco draped a shawl around her shoulders and Harry cast a Warming Charm on it.

“You need help,” Draco said, and rubbed her shoulders briskly for a moment, until Narcissa squeezed his hand in silent question. Then he stepped back and scowled horribly, in a way that honestly impressed her. “Moody has no right to _question_ you like that, when you’re still magically exhausted.”

“He would question me at any time. I must be as prepared to meet him when I am magically exhausted as at any other time.”

“Do you want me to kill him, Mother?”

Narcissa looked Harry mildly in the eye until he flushed and glanced at the floor. “Where in the way I just acted was any hint of asking for his death?”

“He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with questioning you like that.”

“So you keep repeating, Draco, but he is an Auror, and probably a spy from the factions in the Ministry who worry about my growing power. We cannot act openly against him right now.”

Draco turned away, his mouth a tight line. Narcissa studied him and sipped the cup of tea that Harry had made for her. “Well, what is it? Is he troubling you so much in class that you want to take some kind of vengeance on him out of it?”

“He’s engaging me in debate,” Draco said, his voice muffled. He sat down heavily on the couch they’d been sitting on before, and Harry took a seat beside him and gently ran a hand through his hair. Narcissa saw the lines around Draco’s mouth relax, but he kept his head turned away, his shoulders hunched. “It’s just that he does it with questions to the rest of the class, so _everyone_ is debating me. And they’re getting further and further away from thinking that Father did _anything_ honorable in the war.”

“Moody is using the debates to make the rest of the class hate Draco,” Harry added quietly, and pulled until Draco’s head was resting in his lap. “Draco hates it.”

“And them.” Draco curled up harder against Harry’s side.

“Imagine that the worst-case scenario comes true, and Moody makes everyone hate you thoroughly,” Narcissa said quietly, drawing her sons’ attention. “What would you do in that case, Draco?”

“Watch my back very carefully as I go through the corridors? Since I won’t be allowed to hex them if we keep to your regime, Mother, but they can do whatever they want to me.”

Narcissa’s silence made Harry wince a little, but Draco watched her with bitter eyes. Harry did start to open his mouth, but Narcissa glanced at him, and he nodded and sighed and shut it. Narcissa laid out the conclusions, since Draco was too consumed by his anger at the moment to work through to them.

“Then they hate you. You take it in silence, because you know that nothing can _truly_ affect your honor and the pride you have in your family. You have shields so that you can deflect childish hexes. If they use anything worse than that, then they’ve violated school rules and you can report them. They would be in the wrong, not you. You sneer at them, you offer insults that don’t sound like insults and will provoke them into rash actions and leave you looking innocent, and you wait for the day you can take revenge.”

“But—that sounds like the way that you act.”

Narcissa smiled and lifted her empty teacup to her son. “And the way that your father acts, now. Although I concede that he didn’t when the Dark Mark was blurring his senses.”

“What _did_ happen, Mother? You never really explained, and we didn’t have the time to talk to you after lunch.”

“Voldemort decided that your father’s loyalty was suspect at last, and proceeded to poison him through the Dark Mark…”

Narcissa laid it out simply and smoothly, not skipping the part where she had slit her own throat to defeat the werewolves. They listened in what looked like sick fascination, clutching each other’s hands. Narcissa wound down and leaned back against the chair, watching the fire as it danced.

“Please never do that again, Mother.”

It was Harry who was kneeling on the floor by her chair, staring at her with wide-open eyes and a pale face. Narcissa reached out and gently stroked his cheek. “I will try never to do that again, dearest,” she murmured. “I hardly liked it myself. But it had to be done, and that was the surest way, the way that I thought I had a chance of surviving.”

“But you didn’t _know_.”

“I didn’t know for sure that my curse would work on Voldemort, or that you would take to the discipline, or that you and Draco would fall in love. Some risks are worth taking.”

“Even if you deprived us of a mother?” Draco demanded harshly from the couch where he was sitting, his hands wound together.

“Sometimes,” Narcissa said quietly.

Neither of her sons seemed to know what to say to that. Narcissa leaned down to kiss Harry on the forehead where his scar had once been, then stood and crossed over to the couch to kiss Draco in the same place. “It’s well now. I survived, and you can stop having nightmares of what _might_ have happened, and go back to baiting Moody.”

They still insisted on remaining with her while Narcissa prepared for her classes that night, and remaining within her quarters to wait for her after she came back from them. Narcissa shook her head a little as she walked up the stairs, carrying a pile of marked parchment with her.

_They are wonderful sons, the best a mother could ask for. Even if they do worry rather too much._


	4. War and Fire

“Professor Malfoy!”

“We do have to stop meeting like this, Professor Moody,” Narcissa said, shaking her head a little as she slowed in the corridor leading to the Great Hall. She hadn’t even had breakfast yet, which made this a new record for Moody cornering her. She continued to walk, forcing Moody to limp alongside her. “What is it? Did one of the detentions you gave not do what you wanted it to do? I can give you some tips on detentions that work but don’t involve—”

“You know I’m talking about the Dark magic that you used to save your home, Professor Malfoy.”

“Which isn’t illegal, the kinds of rituals that one can perform in the privacy of one’s own home, Professor Moody. Or are you saying that I should have let the home of my sons’ childhood be destroyed, and my husband die, rather than use Dark magic?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Moody turned around and managed to get in front of her, planting his wooden peg and glaring at her. “There are _lines_ that should not be crossed!”

“I completely agree. For example, one of my lines is not waging backbiting war against students I don’t like simply because of something their family did.” Narcissa moved a step nearer, ignoring the fact that Moody didn’t shift. “What do you think of _that_ particular line, Professor Moody?”

The man was silent, his eyes fixated on her, even the magical eye not roaming around his face the way it usually did. Then he let out an explosive snort. “Crimes need to be paid for. And sometimes the Wizengamot isn’t good about seeing justice done.”

“What crime has my son committed? When was his Wizengamot trial?”

Moody slammed his peg into the floor again. “You know as well as I do that I’m talking about your _husband_ , madam.”

“And you intend to make my husband pay for the crimes he was _acquitted_ of by punishing his son. And also the students in your class that you subject to war stories, regardless of whether or not they lost family members in the war, whether or not it might scar them. How considerate of you, Professor Moody.”

“Which of them complained?”

Narcissa smiled at him and stepped gracefully around him. Moody was battle-trained, but he was also hampered by his missing leg, and by the time he was stumping after her again, Narcissa had reached the stairs.

“Stop running away from me, Professor Malfoy!”

Narcissa sighed and shook her head. “When you continue to tell me it would be better if my husband had died and my home was destroyed, and when you continue to hold my son responsible for a war that ended when he was _one_ , I see no point in continuing the conversation, Professor Moody.”

There were other people around now, watching, which was probably why Moody had made the announcement as loudly as he had. He didn’t appear to have thought she would use the same tactic on him. He scowled for a second, then stumped further along the staircase and turned in a different direction on the third floor.

Narcissa walked the rest of the way to breakfast, and maintained her secret smile, and shook her head when she caught Draco’s stare from the Slytherin table. No. She didn’t need him to go after Moody for her. Narcissa already had a plan for that in mind.

*

“Come in, Miss Bones.”

Narcissa watched in some curiosity as Susan Bones came to sit in the chair in front of her. Ever since the incident last year when her friend Hannah Abbott had “dueled” Harry and Bones had been her second, and then Amelia Bones had been murdered and Harry tried for her murder, Narcissa had expected coolness between the Bones family and the Malfoys. And Bones had indeed held herself aloof in classes this year. She’d also been one of the students listening intently to Moody’s stories of the war in Defense class, according to Draco. And why not? Her parents and brothers had died then, her aunt only recently.

But the young woman who sat down in front of her now and smoothed her skirt across her knees was a calm-looking one. If she was acting, she was an actress Narcissa would have liked to have the training of. “I wanted to ask you some questions about what Professor Moody was saying this morning, Professor Malfoy.”

“All right, Miss Bones. Keep in mind that I may not answer them.”

Bones bit her lip and nodded. “All right,” she echoed. “Is it—it’s _true_ that you held off a werewolf army that was trying to destroy your home and kill Mr. Malfoy?”

“I did indeed, Miss Bones. Using some of the private rituals that the Ministry does classify as Dark.”

“Oh. And—it’s true that your husband was acquitted by the Wizengamot for being accused of being a Death Eater?”

“It is.” Narcissa saw no reason to deny the truth. That was the matter of public trial records that Bones could look up in any case, and Narcissa would only look stupid if she tried to deny it.

“But he still did some awful things. Even though he was under the Imperius Curse.”

“Yes. I will not lie. To an extent, no remorse can make up for the losses that some of the people he attacked suffered.”

Bones closed her eyes. Narcissa waited, not sure what was coming next. It was probably something about Draco or Harry, but then again, Moody hadn’t included specific accusations about them this morning. Their behavior in his classes, pretending not to notice the insults and forcing their classmates or Moody to say something definitive and actionable, was working well.

“Can I—how do I report a professor to the Ministry for improper teaching, Professor Malfoy? Because all Professor Moody tells us is war stories, and he tries to make us hate each other! It’s not _fair_.”

Narcissa smiled at her. To think she should find an ally when she hadn’t been looking for her. Then again, Narcissa had often found that the universe showered gifts on the deserving.

“In fact, Miss Bones,” she said, reaching down and drawing out a piece of parchment that she’d started that morning, “I was preparing to file an official complaint myself. But it would help if it came with corroborating evidence from a student in Professor Moody’s Defense class, so that it doesn’t simply look like the report of a disgruntled parent.”

Bones gave a grim smile. “I’m perfectly happy to help you, Professor Malfoy. I can’t stand unfairness.” She hesitated, then added, “And the way they tried Harry for my aunt’s…death was unfair, too.”

“I am glad that you think so, Miss Bones.”

“Is there any way to make them realize that?”

“Oh, they will,” Narcissa said softly as she watched Bones begin to write down her own observations and specific examples. “They may not realize it yet, but they will soon.”

*

“Cissy! Cissy!”

Narcissa sighed and sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Sirius, do you realize that I teach until midnight and that you’ve Flooed me at five in the morning?” she murmured, but smiled when she saw the way her cousin’s head wobbled in the fire. It meant he was trying to bounce up and down even though he was also kneeling to thrust his head into the hearth.

“You obviously fell asleep at your desk marking. It’s not like I interrupted _good_ sleep,” Sirius said, and then beamed at her. “You’ll never guess what I found!”

“A way to become a mature, responsible adult?”

“You’re my conscience, I don’t need one,” said Sirius brightly. “No. I found what I’m sure is another of Voldemort’s Horcruxes! There was something about a locket, right? You were looking for one? A locket that used to belong to Salazar Slytherin?”

Narcissa caught her breath and managed not to hiss. Here she had been trying to think of a way to search for it when it had probably been stolen from Hezpibah Smith, and Sirius had had it all along. “Where did you retrieve it from?”

“The cabinet upstairs.”

Narcissa stared at him. Sirius laughed. “It’s a rare day when I can make _you_ speechless!” he said, and the flames wavered so hard that they almost went out. Sirius managed to hold still enough for long enough that they didn’t. “It turns out that Regulus somehow discovered where it was. Something about Voldemort using Kreacher to hide it, and then Regulus went to destroy it, and he put a copy where the real locket was, and he died from some kind of poison there, but he gave the real Horcrux to Kreacher to take back and hide somewhere, and Kreacher tried to destroy it, but he couldn’t, and—”

“Calm down.” Narcissa said that sternly enough that Sirius finally did flash her a sheepish smile and stop talking. “Are you sure that this isn’t some kind of trick? Kreacher has been less than amenable in the past. Could he have created a trap for you? Perhaps something that would poison you as he claimed Regulus was poisoned?”

Narcissa’s mind was leaping between ideas even as she spoke. It was true that Regulus had disappeared abruptly, and no one knew why. And it was true that Kreacher had been loyal to Regulus and would have obeyed him in any way possible, even by leaving him to die and accepting a locket that turned out to be indestructible.

“You ought to come here and feel this fucking thing for yourself, Cissy,” Sirius said. The smile faded from his face for the first time all conversation. “It feels—dirty.”

Narcissa decided. As exhausted as she was, a Horcrux was important, and she was the only one who might be able to tell the difference between a regular Dark artifact and an actual Horcrux. “I’m on my way over. Make sure that you’re only touching the locket with silk or salt, not—”

“Not my bare hand. Honestly, Cissy, I know better than _that_.”

Sirius’s face disappeared from the fire. Narcissa shook her head in amusement and stood, tossing her hair behind her shoulder, then strode to the hearth. A simple handful of Floo powder took her through to Grimmauld Place, and the minute she felt her skin trying to crawl off her bones, she knew Sirius was right.

She turned around to find Sirius holding out a piece of silk with the locket on it. Narcissa examined it carefully. Yes, the locket with a gaudy serpent, or S, on the front made of emeralds looked exactly like the description she’d got from Burke’s mind when she visited his shop several months ago. And the locket rattled when she stared at it, as if it knew that she wanted to destroy it.

“We can do it now?” Sirius was practically hopping up and down.

“If you don’t mind me casting Fiendfyre in your gardens,” Narcissa said, and drew her wand.

Sirius drew back with a gasp, but then he swallowed and forced himself to shrug and smile. “That’ll do it? I’m sure the garden’s had worse things than Fiendfyre cast in it.” He turned to lead the way out.

Kreacher appeared in front of them the next moment, wringing his ears. Narcissa froze Sirius with a look when he started to say something. She would rather hear the story from the elf’s mouth. “Yes, Kreacher?”

“That is Master Regulus’s locket.” Kreacher never glanced at either of them, which was highly unusual when he was in front of wizards. All his attention was locked on the Horcrux, as if he thought that he might have to snatch it from them.

“Yes, it is.” Narcissa kept her voice quiet and gentle. “Can you tell me how you came to have it?”

“I _told_ you that, Cissy!”

“Your account was enthusiastic but not very coherent. Be _quiet_ , Sirius.”

Kreacher twitched his ears and stared a little harder at Narcissa. Then he nodded. “Master Regulus be lending me to bad wizard when he goes to cave.” His voice dropped, to the point that Narcissa knelt down to hear him. “I was being on the verge of dying, but Master Regulus, he said, return. So I returned. Master Regulus was angry, so angry! He truly cared about poor Kreacher.” The tears that ran down Kreacher’s face wore paths in the grime.

Narcissa felt her own face tighten. _I know that Sirius doesn’t care for this elf, but if nothing else, he should have made sure that Kreacher had a clean place to sleep and clothes to wear. It’s disgraceful to have one that looks like this._

“Master Regulus, he asked questions, yes, he did. And he be figuring out that bad wizard hid a powerful artifact in the cave. And he took me back, and he drank the poison himself, and he replaced the locket. Kreacher didn’t want to be leaving Master Regulus, no, he didn’t.” Kreacher’s hands rose and pulled at his ears as if he was going to yank them off his head, but it seemed to be an absent gesture, done for the sake of doing it more than because Kreacher really wanted to punish himself. “But Master Regulus, he gave poor Kreacher no choice. Kreacher has been trying to destroy the locket for years, because that is what Master Regulus would have wanted.” He began to blubber, and now snot was running down his face as well as tears. Narcissa still didn’t move away. “But Kreacher could never destroy it. Mistress Narcissa is going to destroy it?”

“Yes,” Narcissa said quietly. She glanced at Sirius, who was watching her dumbstruck. At least that meant that he wasn’t making a move to interfere, either. “I am going to use Fiendfyre on it, Kreacher. I never met the Dark artifact yet that Fiendfyre couldn’t destroy.”

Kreacher flung his arms around her neck and cried unabashedly. Narcissa patted his back and made a mental note to thoroughly wash her neck and clothes later. “Mistress Narcissa is such a good, kind mistress,” he sobbed. “Master Regulus would have liked to be here to see her destroy it, yes, he would.”

“I don’t understand _any_ of this,” Sirius interrupted loudly. “Why would Regulus want to destroy a Horcrux? Why would he give up his own life to do it? He was a Death Eater!”

Kreacher glared at Sirius, which at least meant Narcissa could cast the first of the cleaning spells. “Master Regulus was a good, kind wizard!” he declared, with a stamp of his begrimed foot. “He is understanding Kreacher, and he is never wanting to serve bad wizard! He only be doing it because Mistress and Master said he should!”

“You mean my parents?”

“Mistress and Master,” Kreacher repeated, and Narcissa was sure that he was talking about Walburga and Orion. “But Master Regulus, he wanted to be proud, he wanted to make Master and Mistress proud, but he did not want to be torturing people. So he decided to turn on bad wizard and destroy him.” He drooped abruptly. “But Kreacher never succeeded in destroying the locket.”

“We are going to do it now,” Narcissa told him. “Do you want to come along?”

“ _Cissy_!”

Narcissa turned, and made Sirius shrink back a little with the way she looked at him. It wasn’t his fault, truly. He had never been the one to make Regulus think that he had to follow Voldemort, and just because he had run away didn’t mean that Walburga and Orion had been harder on Regulus; they probably would have been that way anyway. But at the moment, Narcissa didn’t want to hear his excuses.

“Right.” Sirius cleared his throat and fell in behind her.

*

Narcissa placed the locket on the ground in the back garden of Grimmauld Place and moved carefully away from it. It seemed to shimmer and twist for a minute, as though the soul-shard inside it knew exactly what was coming.

“Yes, you might,” Narcissa breathed, and cast the incantation for Fiendfyre.

It came roaring out of her wand, leaping and twisting around itself, flames colliding and soaring upwards until the sheer heat of it made her face feel as if it was going to melt. It crept towards her and tugged at her feet with one squid-coil. Fiendfyre always wanted to get out of control and devour the one who had dared to call it.

Narcissa spurned it with a tap of her foot and sent it at the locket.

The locket did open before the Fiendfyre got there, and Narcissa caught a glimpse of Lucius with his face twisted to resemble a corpse’s, before it became Harry with a knife in his hand and the expression of a maniac in his eyes. The fire ate the locket before it had time to change into a representation of Draco, who Narcissa assumed would come next. She shook her head as she heard the high, thin scream.

_I hope that was enough of a memorial to you, Regulus. I hope that you can feel Voldemort dying._

She controlled the Fiendfyre with a twist of her wand—it tried some nonsense, of course, but Narcissa simply shut that down—and faced Sirius again. His mouth was open, and he was looking back and forth between her and the charred patch of grass as if she had done something astounding.

“What?” Narcissa asked him.

Sirius swallowed. “I used to think that you didn’t succumb to the allure of Dark magic because you’re just so good at it, but—you just don’t _care_ about it, do you? You don’t find it tempting.”

“No,” Narcissa said. “My temptations lie in things I can do myself, and not in what someone or something else might offer me.” She glanced at Kreacher, and found him standing with his hands clasped before his chest and his gaze fixed on the place the locket had been.

“And I do like to give other people some of what they want,” she added. “You really should order him to wash himself, Sirius.” And she went into the house.


	5. A Response

“And if you could detail what you witnessed?”

Dean Thomas nodded strongly and started writing, his jaw set. “It’s not right, what he’s trying to imply about Harry,” he muttered as he scribbled down some of his observations of Moody’s class. “I don’t care if he is a professor, Harry’s saved us all a lot, and then Moody tries to come in and imply that he’s Dark just because he got himself adopted by you? That’s ridiculous.”

Narcissa smiled. “I entirely agree, Mr. Thomas.” Harry was Dark because he followed the discipline and had learned some Dark spells, not because he had been adopted.

Thomas stepped back, and Longbottom came forwards. Narcissa watched him with her eyebrows slightly raised. Draco had been all but certain that Longbottom wouldn’t join their protest against Moody because of his parents’ past during the war and Narcissa’s relationship with Bellatrix Lestrange, although Harry had been less certain.

“Yes. Mr. Longbottom?”

“I—I think the same thing as Dean,” Longbottom whispered, glancing around her quarters. Narcissa was collecting the responses from students that proved Moody an unworthy teacher here, rather than in her office, on the slight chance that Moody might try to use her legal status as a professor with power over students against her. Students had to actually seek out her quarters and confirm that they weren’t bargaining for a better mark if they wanted to put their observations down. “Moody spends way too much time talking about the past war and not the current one.”

Narcissa nodded. Harry had been right, then. Longbottom was marked by that previous war, but that was all the more reason that he didn’t want to waste time dwelling on it. “Very well, Mr. Longbottom. Please write down everything you have a solid memory of and would be willing to testify about.”

Longbottom’s hand stopped reaching for the quill. “Te-testify?”

Narcissa shrugged. “Professor Moody is popular in the Ministry among certain people. I want to make sure we have the weight of voices against him we need.”

She did think for a moment that Longbottom would leave without adding his name and observations, but a second later he took a deep breath, seized the quill, and began to write.

Narcissa smiled.

*

Narcissa slipped like a shadow out of Trelawney’s Tower, a faint smile on her face and her hands clutched around a blue quartz globe. Her institution that the worthless professor might possess some useful Divination objects inherited from her predecessors had been correct.

Not that there wasn’t some risk to using this globe, not least the risk that she might go mad. But Narcissa was used to worse.

She sought a secluded room on the fourth floor that she had identified a week back, one that had a powerful spell remnant lingering around it which managed to make everyone who came near it feel uneasy and find an excuse to back away. It had taken her an hour of meditation to make sure that it was only residue and not an actual indication of danger’s presence. She took her seat on the chair she’d conjured earlier and laid the globe in the hollow of a table she’d filched from the junk room where she and Idunna had found the diadem.

“Speak to me,” she murmured.

The globe slowly warmed up beneath her hands. Narcissa kept them in place and closed her eyes. The globe was an aid to Sight, but as Trelawney should have remembered, it was the _Inner_ Eye that it stimulated. Gazing into crystal did nothing except for the very rare people who were talented with that material.

The blue glow that Narcissa saw behind her eyelids swirled like the smoke in Trelawney’s room, and the sense of an alien, questioning mind touched hers.

“Hufflepuff’s cup,” Narcissa whispered. She was all but certain the cup was a Horcrux. But she had come no nearer being certain where it was held. She doubted it would conveniently appear, the way the locket had, in some other cabinet in the Black properties.

The blue swirl turned a slow, poisonous green. Narcissa remained calm and alert. It was entirely possible that the truth would appear to her in symbols instead of a true vision. She knew how tricky prophecy was, and an artifact that activated the Sight might be even more so.

The world around them glittered and seemed to bounce. Narcissa found herself falling down as from a height towards a shining, square white block, which might be meant to stand for a building. And then she blew through a door like a wind, and found herself hearing a distant voice sing a scrap of verse.

_Of finding more than treasure there…_

In the final moment of the vision, she seemed to flip and land on her feet the way she would if she had turned a fall into a somersault, and a huge crest rose in front of her. It blazed clearly for only a moment before she slammed into it and the vision ceased.

Narcissa opened her eyes and found herself sitting in front of the globe. She traced the top of it with a thoughtful hand while she slowly smiled.

The vision had been as ambiguous as it could be, but she still knew what it meant. The scrap of verse came from the warning to thieves engraved on the doors of Gringotts. And the crest had been a great capital letter L draped with vines and with two ravens soaring overhead.

The cup was in Gringotts, in the Lestrange vault.

“So he entrusted it to you, sweet sister,” Narcissa whispered.

*

Narcissa stood tall in the prow of the boat and watched the island grow nearer. The mist billowed and stirred around her, rather the way the blue smoke had in the vision the globe had given her. The world shivered with despair as the Dementors of Azkaban sensed them and began to press closer.

Narcissa flicked her wand, and the grizzly Patronus that appeared to prowl next to her drove them cowering away.

“That’s remarkable,” said the Auror sitting next to her, and nodded to her. “Did you know that the form your Patronus takes shows what Animagus form you would have if you could achieve it?”

“Fascinating,” Narcissa murmured.

She stepped out of the boat the minute it touched the shore. The grey walls ahead shone with grime and dripping water, ice and broken stone. Narcissa walked from Auror to Auror, down the chain, speaking the right words while looking ahead all the while. She had only had to say that she suspected Bella of paying money for an attempt on Harry’s life, and they had brought her right away. The public had decided that it adored Harry again after Voldemort’s attempt to make him seem responsible for Amelia Bones’s death.

Narcissa had little patience for the public, but occasionally even they served a purpose.

She knew she was close to the right cell when she heard the sound of mad cackling. Narcissa sighed and shook her head. She liked to think that _she_ would keep up standards even if she was the imprisoned one—such as laughing, not cackling.

“Don’t know if you’re going to get much out of her, Mrs. Malfoy. She’s like this all the time. Truly mad.”

“That may be the case, but I need to speak with her anyway.”

The Auror nodded and stepped back. They always allowed the family members who came to see the prisoners a modicum of privacy. Narcissa could understand that, approve of it in this case, and still think basic eavesdropping charms a necessity.

Then again, she was not in charge of Azkaban any more than she was a prisoner there. She stepped closer to the bars and studied the tangle of black hair in front of her, so thick that it covered any trace of robes or hands. “Bella?”

The tangle of black hair trembled, and then spun around. It was like watching an ambling bush, sad and shaggy. “Cissy,” said the whisper from the middle of the bush, and then a hand did appear after all, rising to clutch the bars. “Have you come to get me out? Did our Lord send you to get me out?”

Narcissa sighed. That was probably the deepest manifestation of Bella’s madness, that she thought Narcissa would bow to a pathetic creature like Voldemort.

“He wants you out,” she said, bending down near Bella’s ear and speaking softly. “But he needs for just one thing to happen first. He needs to be assured that you never abandoned your loyalty to him while you spent time in prison.”

“I never did! I swear, I swear, I swear—”

Narcissa cut off the rising shriek that might well have carried to the Auror’s ears. “Listen to me. He needs to _know_. _I_ need to know. That means that you have to pass a test, and give permission for me to retrieve the treasure he once entrusted to you.”

“You know about the treasure. You know.”

Narcissa nodded even though it hadn’t been phrased as a question. She couldn’t expect her sister to have retained a basic sense of courtesy, given her other delusions. “I do. But the security on it means that I can’t simply go and retrieve it myself—and the Dark Lord doesn’t want me to, in any case. I need to know if you will prove your loyalty and allow someone else to enter your vault.”

There was only a moment of silence before Bella chuckled, hard and watery and long. “Yes. You need me to enter the vault—I need to be there, or Rodolphus needs to be there. But it never said the whole of us. It never said the _whole_ , eh?” She abruptly clenched her hand into a fist, except for the middle finger she left sticking out. “Cut it off and bring it with you. By the laws of Gringotts, it counts as permission.”

Narcissa had known that, and had intended to remove a hand from Rodolphus or Rabastan if she needed to, but it was better for the magic and her chances of walking away with the cup to have the flesh offered freely. She still made a show of reluctance as she drew her wand. “You’re sure?”

“The Dark Lord has _all_ my loyalty! _All_!”

Her shrieks might have brought the guard back again, so Narcissa acted quickly, two spells cast together as she’d done in the past. One of them severed Bellatrix’s finger, and the other cauterized the wound. Bella never even flinched. Narcissa frowned as she cast another charm that would numb the finger and prevent any pain from touching her sister. A Black would make a sacrifice like that, without screaming, for a worthy cause. It was only a pity that her sister’s definition of “worthy cause” and her own differed so wildly.

“You’ll take care of it,” Bella whispered. “You’ll serve him.”

Narcissa knelt down so that her eyes were level with her sister’s, and their wild gleam behind that thicket of hair. “I swear, Bella, I’m going to give the Dark Lord exactly what he deserves from me.”

Bella was a Legilimens and could have detected lies, but technically nothing Narcissa said had been a lie. Bella exhaled now and reached out a wavering hand to touch Narcissa’s hair, not seeming to notice that she only had four fingers on that hand. “Good, sister. Good.”

*

“It is _most_ irregular to allow you to access the Lestrange vault.”

Narcissa smiled slightly. She had been seated in an uncomfortable goblin office for the past three hours, while they waited for her to leave. The waiting game was one the goblins played more often than most people realized. She leaned forwards to address the small goblin who stood scowling at her from near the door. “I know that the vault opens to the hand of one of the authorized people. You saw what I carry. And you know from the magic you passed over it that it was given to me willingly.”

The scowl deepened on the goblin’s face to the point that he looked as if he might bite. Then he shook his head and muttered, “What are people coming to, cutting off their fingers? In _my_ day it was a whole hand or nothing,” and spun around to march out. Narcissa followed, since this time they’d left the door open.

The cart ride down led them past a dragon, whom Narcissa ignored. The poor thing was hardly a match for the ones she had sent to sleep when she sought to prevent Harry from having to compete in the Tournament. She stepped out near the Lestrange vault and leaned forwards, Bellatrix’s finger touching the door.

It vanished like spilled water. The goblin watched with narrowed eyes as she stepped into the vault and looked around.

Rodolphus and Rabastan, like most rich wizards, liked to flaunt their wealth, and Bella certainly would have done nothing to stop them when she married Rodolphus. Gold coins sprawled across the floor and leaned against the walls in bulky stacks. Crowns and scepters and pendants and forms of jewelry that Narcissa would have found too vulgar to wear to a costume party dangled and dripped from shelves. There were surprisingly few books; the ones that stood there appeared to have been kept solely for their gaudy, glittering covers.

It took Narcissa perhaps three minutes to locate Hufflepuff’s cup, which made her think she should resume her own training soon. She made sure that Bellatrix’s finger was the first to touch the cup, and the shimmer of the curses guarding it popped like a soap bubble. Narcissa then wrapped her own hand in silk to gather it up.

“What is that?” The goblin was on point like a dog when Narcissa turned around, holding the cup.

“An artifact,” Narcissa said, in a sweet enough voice that the goblin nodded along for a moment before realizing it and glaring at her.

“I insist that you tell me.”

“I have.” The goblins held strictly to legal niceties, one reason they had an edge over wizards who would expect to play by the spirit and not the letter of the law. Narcissa, on the other hand, had no expectation of either.

The goblin muttered and kicked the side of the vault doorway and said impolite things in Gobbledegook all the way back to the surface. Narcissa, the layer of silk separating her from the Horcrux that was trying to burn her hands and her lap, didn’t care.

*

“I thought you might want to destroy this Horcrux yourself.”

Harry’s eyes were wide as they locked on the glittering, badger-decorated cup sitting in the middle of the table in Narcissa’s quarters. “You’d let me? I mean, I just thought you were going to take care of all of them.”

Narcissa smiled and sipped from the cup of mulled wine that she’d rewarded herself with after her successful return from Gringotts. “You’re seventeen now, dear, and you no longer have the vulnerability of the Horcrux in your head that might interact with this one. The only person that you’ve been able to take vengeance on directly was Umbridge. I wanted to offer you this one.”

Harry nodded slowly, eyes locked on the cup. “You think I can control Fiendfyre well enough to do the job?”

“Yes.” Narcissa did have contingent wards that would go up around the table, just in case, but she thought that Harry had enough self-discipline, strength of will, and command of Dark magic to do this job without the extra reassurance.

Harry nodded again. A hint of a tooth was showing as he began to smile, which reminded Narcissa of a dragon slowly baring its fangs. He drew his wand and paced over to stand opposite the cup.

The thing apparently had more sentience than Narcissa had given it credit for, because a subtle glow promptly surrounded it. And then a voice sighed out as though it was coming from several different directions. “ _Harry_.”

Harry didn’t flinch or move from his battle-ready stance. Neither did Narcissa. She had told Harry he could handle this, and she still believed that. She would intervene only if it was absolutely required.

“ _Harry. I could give you your parents back. I could make you the most powerful wizard in the world. All you have to do is tell me what you want._ ” The badger on the side of the cup twisted and warped, the thick neck slimming down and sticking out so that it looked more like a snake. A floating pair of crimson eyes locked onto Harry. “ _Give me your desires, and I will give them back to you. In return, you need only keep me intact._ ”

“I already have a mother who’s taught me to be powerful,” Harry said, and launched the Fiendfyre.

The cup shrieked as it burned. Harry watched with a pitiless expression, and as Narcissa had thought, the flames never even came close to getting out of control. When they writhed towards the edges of the wards, Harry brought them back with a lash of will that needed no corresponding movement from his wand.

They did not even scorch the table, and they faded the minute Harry jerked his head. Narcissa smiled as he turned towards her and held out her hand. Harry grabbed it and gently lifted her hand to kiss the back of it.

“And I have two sons,” Narcissa said softly, “both very dear to me.”

Harry proved that, hardened warrior or not, he could still blush.


	6. Laying Out

“I want to talk to you, Professor Malfoy.”

Moody growled the words in a way that was probably meant as a threat. Honestly, Narcissa had heard better threats from three-legged bees. (Breaking into that house with bee guardians had been an adventure). She turned around with a polite smile and an inclination of her head. “As you wish, Professor Moody.”

Moody glared at the students in the corridor who had halted to stare at them and then jerked his head towards the nearest door, where his office was. “In there. Now.”

Narcissa sighed at the rudeness, but moved in the direction he suggested. Moody slammed the door hard enough that the walls quivered, and stomped over to stand in front of her. Narcissa plotted ways to shove him off-balance and kept her face calm and neutral at the same time.

“You’re encouraging my students to disrespect me.”

“I’m concerned to hear that, Professor Moody. What has been happening?”

Moody’s nostrils flared. He hadn’t expected the courtesy, but then, few people expected a courteous assassin. “You’ve been telling them that my perspective on the war isn’t true,” he muttered finally.

“I thought of that as a fair exchange of opinions. I know that you have been telling the students that _our_ perspective on the war isn’t true. I corrected those students who sought me out as to the factual inaccuracies.”

“ _Factual inaccuracies!_ Your husband was a bloody _Death Eater_!”

“Please don’t swear at me, Professor Moody,” Narcissa murmured with all the grace she could summon. She was taking mental notes so as to create an interesting document for the Ministry later. “As I said, we have a difference of opinion. When someone asks me about what I believe, I will answer. I am not deliberately lying or undermining you.”

“You could tell the _truth._ ”

“I am.”

“You are not!”

Narcissa spread her fingers in a slight helpless gesture. “And here we’ve reached the point where we both sound five years old. Is this going to take much longer, Professor Moody? I have classes to prepare for.”

The old man stared at her. Narcissa waited and calmly held his eyes. There were a number of things he could do now, and nearly every path they might take was to her advantage, not his.

Moody finally huffed and said, soft and low, “When your husband is called to fight for Voldemort again, then we’ll find out who the students believe.”

“It won’t happen, but thank you for thinking of us,” Narcissa said to him, with a small, regal nod, and walked towards the door.

The curse at her back was wordless, but Narcissa was only all the more prepared for it; the gathering magic in the air was enough to warn her, and the swish of his wand. Narcissa ducked neatly and came up leaning against one of the chairs in front of Moody’s desk. The curse ate into the wall and dripped green, poisonous-looking acid down the stone.

“Well,” Narcissa said softly. She could have said something else, _done_ something else, but Moody got away with as much as he did because of his reputation. When she destroyed that, it would be as effective as destroying someone else’s body would be.

“Should have let me hit you with that. Should have let me put you out of your misery. Your sons might grow up into decent people if they didn’t have you around and stayed away from their father.”

Narcissa turned her head slowly and let her eyes meet Moody’s. The man didn’t have enough sense to pause. He snorted at her and stumped over to sit behind his desk, apparently forgetting her existence in favor of a stack of essays.

Narcissa left. The words were practically writing themselves in her head.

*

“And then he fired a _curse_ at you?”

“Yes, Acting Minister.”

Rufus Scrimgeour stared at her as if waiting for the punchline. Of course, he was one of her allies because he was good at picking out nuances, and he knew more about what she was really like than some of these fools. He would expect lies and evasions and exaggerations that took advantage of some vulnerability Moody had showed.

But that was precisely the reason Narcissa had come to him with the truth and nothing but the truth. Even the Pensieve memories she could give and the documents of student opinions were only bare facts. She sat in front of Scrimgeour with her hands folded and her eyes down.

“I’ve never known Moody...why would you say he did it?”

“I can only speculate, Acting Minister. He didn’t actually state his motives to me.”

“Well, speculate then.”

Narcissa looked up demurely. “Off the record, sir?”

Scrimgeour waved an irritable hand.

“He told me that my sons might be decent people if they grew up without me and stayed away from my husband. He was at least implying that he wanted to kill me and spare them growing up with me. He might have been joking, of course,” Narcissa added softly.

Scrimgeour closed his eyes and sighed long and hard. “I suppose these deficiencies didn’t show up when he was an Auror because he was surrounded by people who thought exactly like him,” he muttered. “We’re not exactly a broad-minded lot.”

Narcissa widened her eyes and said nothing.

Scrimgeour looked hard at her. “You feel that he is a credible threat to your life?”

Narcissa lied for the first time since entering the Ministry. “I do, sir. I never thought he would use a curse like that. After seeing what the acid did to the stone, I can only shudder when I imagine what it could have done to me.”

Scrimgeour nodded as if he’d expected her to say that. “Very well. Then I’m going to call Moody in and have a talk with him. He’ll have to understand the different expectations in place if he’s going to continue being a professor.”

Narcissa, of course, knew that would not be enough. She wanted him destroyed. But she had already begun to walk that path. She nodded and stood. “Of course. I would also appreciate it if you enjoined him to remember that he is not fighting the war over again.”

“Please explain what you mean by that, Professor Malfoy.”

“Only that he spends large portions of his Defense classes telling stories to the students about the first war. A few of them have complained to me about it because they thought he was trying to turn them against my sons and perhaps other students who have acquitted Death Eater parents.” Narcissa gave the apologetic smile of someone who hardly wanted to trouble the Acting Minister with such tales. “I hope that he can understand why this wouldn’t be acceptable.”

“I don’t suppose you have documentation of those complaints?”

“I do, actually, Acting Minister. But not with me. Would you like me to send it to you by owl?”

Scrimgeour sighed. He obviously knew when he was beaten. “Of course, Professor Malfoy. I assume that it will include student names and dates? And that the students who gave you this information ware willing to testify to it in court?”

“It’s as though you read my mind, Acting Minister.”

Scrimgeour actually put his hand over his face for a minute. But he had known what she was when he allied with her. He sighed again and sat back. “Please send the documentation as soon as you can, Professor Malfoy. I’ll want to speak with some of those students once I’ve spoken with Alastor, but I _know_ you’ll have them ready and willing.”

Narcissa smiled at him.

“ _Please_ go back to Hogwarts.”

*

“I want to do something permanent to him.”

“I would ask that you at least wait until I have ruined his reputation within the Ministry,” Narcissa murmured, not looking up from her marking. She did wonder how even first-years could mistake Mercury for Saturn.

“He tried to _kill you_ , Mother.”

“And so did Voldemort, but he is still alive. I prefer the lingering revenge.”

Draco huffed and threw himself on the couch in her quarters. Narcissa hid her smile the way she had with Scrimgeour as she carefully circled the wrong answer in red ink and wrote the correct one next to it. Her son had few fits of teenage dramatics, but perhaps it was reasonable for him to have one over this.

“Can Harry kill him?”

“I have promised myself the pleasure of taking his life. But Harry can help. And you can help if you want to.”

Draco rolled over. “How? I don’t have the training you gave Harry.”

“I was thinking that you could help with ruining his reputation, the way you already have by controlling your reactions in his class and encouraging other students to talk to me about their problems with him. But if you want a more active role than that…”

“I do.” Draco abruptly stood up and came over to stand in front of her desk. Narcissa looked up at him, wondering when her son had grown so tall. “Mother, first you almost died because you fought a _werewolf_ army, and then you almost died just because you were speaking to another professor in his office. I can’t do anything about Voldemort or the werewolves right now. Let me do something about Moody.”

Narcissa considered him. Draco’s jaw was clenched in the way that always meant trouble when it was Lucius doing it. She nodded slowly.

“You can only help, however, Draco. You cannot take over completely. I have certain things that _I_ intend to do to Moody, and while I understand why you want to help, your help is welcomed to a limited extent right now.”

“I understand,” Draco said earnestly. “Helping is all I’ll ask for.” He hesitated, then leaned forwards and kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you, Mother. You never—you’ll never know just what I felt when I saw how magically exhausted you were the day after you fought off the werewolves. I never want to see you like that again. I want to be there to help you the way you were always there to help me.”

Narcissa smiled. There were times, when Draco was five or six years old, that she had despaired of teaching him to love anyone but himself.

But Draco loved his family and would make sacrifices for them.

She had succeeded.

*

Moody glared at her the next day in a fashion that said Scrimgeour had indeed called him into his office. But of course, he took no warning from it. That afternoon, he tried to curse her in the back as she left lunch.

Narcissa sidestepped neatly, but this time, she raised a shield. They were out in the open, after all, and what would have happened if a curse had hit one of their _dear_ students?

“Professor Malfoy! I challenge you to a duel!”

Narcissa felt her eyebrows creep up. Well, this was unexpected. She considered Moody from head to foot, or at least from magical eye to wooden leg, and shook her head. “Are you sure this is something you want to do, Professor Moody?”

“You heard me, Professor Malfoy! Or are you frightened?”

“I wanted to spare your remaining relatives the cost of a funeral,” Narcissa said, and turned away to consider where the best dueling arena would be. The Room of Requirement would have been ideal if she wanted to betray its secrets, but as it was, somewhere _outside_ the walls of the castle would suit her. She turned to open her mouth and make the suggestion to Moody.

Another curse was already heading towards her, one that shimmered with all the colors of the Called Conflagration that would cause a wildfire.

Narcissa slammed her shield into place again. As expected before a curse that strong, it held only a moment before breaking apart, but Narcissa had anticipated that. She was already triggering one of the small silver amulets that clung to a necklace around her throat, looking like beads on a larger piece.

The shield that sprang up and wrapped around the curse took the form of an enormous pair of silvery jaws. It ate the curse and rent it into small, brightly-colored motes. Narcissa touched the amulet again, and the magic ceased, although it had trapped the curse and could cast it back again at Moody if necessary.

“ _Dark Arts_!” Moody roared, and pointed his wand.

“ _Alastor Moody_!”

Minerva had an impressive voice when she wanted to, Narcissa thought, turning to look at the Headmistress. She was on her feet, both hands braced on the professors’ table as she leaned forwards, and the look on her face could have frozen some of the assassins Narcissa had faced. Moody turned to stare at her, still clutching his wand.

“She used Dark Arts,” Moody said, and Narcissa bit her lip to stop from laughing at how like a sulky adolescent he sounded.

“You are not to duel in a room with students in it,” Minerva said. Her voice was still glacial. She walked slowly down from the table and towards them, every stride reminding Narcissa of how the Dark Lord would have _liked_ to look. “What did I see but you throwing a curse at Professor Malfoy’s unprotected back? And when she used defensive magic meant to stop it from hitting the students, you accused her.”

“She has been making unfounded accusations about me!”

“At the moment, I can think of several _founded_ ones she could make!” Minerva shouted at him, and that finally seemed to stun Moody into realizing that she wasn’t on his side. He staggered back a step, then started to scowl again, but apparently had the good sense to keep his wand lowered, for which Narcissa was a little sorry.

Minerva took a deep breath and went on. “There are paths that you could follow to combat unfounded accusations, Alastor. Trying to curse Professor Malfoy in the back is _none_ of them.”

“You don’t understand about this woman and the Dark Arts she uses!” Moody apparently had decided that he might as well go down with all banners flying. He pointed a finger at Narcissa, who looked at it politely. “You don’t understand how _evil_ she is and can be! What she can do when fighting off a werewolf army—”

“How does that give you license to curse her in the back outside a standard dueling ring, Alastor?”

“You put down rabid dogs! You don’t let them bite you!”

Narcissa caught a glimpse of Draco, his eyes glittering with arctic fury, and judged that Moody had just made a mistake that was going to cost him more than he could ever guess. She shook her head and sighed a little.

“That is _enough_ , Alastor,” Minerva said. She looked a little tight-lipped herself, but that was enough like her normal expression that Narcissa wasn’t sure that it was related. “You have made your complaints. They have been heard. You have also issued a formal challenge that I am not sure I heard accepted or refuted.” She looked at Narcissa. “Do you agree to duel Professor Moody, Professor Malfoy?”

“I had thought I would accept,” said Narcissa, holding the man’s eyes. “But I have now been witness to three curses cast outside the confines of the dueling ring. I am not sure that I trust Professor Moody to follow the rules.”

“Three? I only saw two now.”

“There was an incident a few days ago when Professor Moody tried to curse me when I was in his office. In the back, once again. It does seem to be his preferred target. I find myself wondering if his reputation for being a skilled fighter is exaggerated.”

Moody swung his wand up. This time, though, Minerva was quicker. “ _Expelliarmus_!”

Moody’s wand soared into her hand. Moody turned a betrayed glance on her. Minerva didn’t yield a hairsbreadth. “Professor Malfoy’s question is fair. You keep trying to break the rules of honorable conduct, Professor Moody. Will you hold by them if you duel her?”

Moody said nothing, but bared his teeth. Narcissa tilted her head. It seemed that she had misestimated Moody. Yes, the destruction of his reputation was still the thing that would hurt him most, but he had almost lost his mind the minute it began. Even a mild scolding from Scrimgeour—and Narcissa knew it would have been mild, with an Auror of Moody’s acknowledged prowess—had made him leap over the edge.

“I do not trust him, I am afraid,” Narcissa said, and made a little helpless motion with one hand, delighting in the way that Moody’s eyes brightened with contained rage. “Even the way he looks at me now is the way that, yes, one would look at a rabid dog.”

“I am going to kill you.” Moody didn’t seem to be aware of their audience, the students who were shrinking back from him and Minerva taking a step forwards. His attention was focused entirely on her. “For what you did to the world, for the practice of Dark Arts, for shielding your Death Eater husband and corrupting the Boy-Who-Lived. I am going to _ruin_ you.”

Narcissa sighed a little and glanced at Minerva. “You see what I have been dealing with?”

“You have my word that Professor Moody will be leaving tomorrow,” said Minerva, and her face really was white now. “I had no idea—I am sorry, Professor Malfoy. It was never my intention to frighten you.”

Narcissa had never had to resist laughter with such tenacity. She only nodded, with a slow, funeral motion, and walked into the corridor with the same slowness.

She knew Moody would probably have tried to curse her again if he had had his wand. She would have been ready for him, but this was more satisfying. The slow tearing apart of his heroic image, and his influence over the students he had tried so hard to turn against her, Draco, and Harry…

It was so sweet that Narcissa wondered if she should have engineered it so fast. This much sugar was probably bad for her.


	7. Ripping Apart

“I know this is all your fault.”

Narcissa smiled faintly to herself. She wasn’t actually in the room with Moody at the moment. He was stomping around his office muttering to himself as he packed. But it was simplicity itself for her to send her consciousness through some of the runes that she had broken into his office to carve on the walls the other day.

She hadn’t been about to let someone take her by surprise again, after his curse in the back truly had.

“This is ridiculous.” Moody waved his wand, and books slammed into his trunk hard enough to make it jump on the floor. “The school is going to the dogs. Dark magic! Dark magic tolerated and embraced by the Headmistress! Albus never would have...”

His voice trailed off, but Narcissa remained, listening, as she watched him gather up and stuff his robes in with a packing charm, and then do the same with some of his Foe-Glasses and other instruments for detecting enemies. She didn’t know if Moody would have been close enough to Dumbledore to know his suspicions about Horcruxes. But she wanted to know if he had.

Moody finally stood back and scowled at everything in his rooms, then grunted and picked up a delicate object from the table next to him. Narcissa squinted. It looked like nothing so much as a stirring rod stuck into the middle of a small crystal ball. But the crystal ball itself had whirling flakes of gold and blue and white in it. Moody stood holding it and appeared to think.

Then he nodded, and a grim smile crossed his mouth. “I can at least make it harder for them,” he whispered, and slipped the crystal ball into his pocket.

When he moved to walk towards the door, Narcissa withdrew her consciousness from the runes and opened her eyes in her own office. Then she stood and drew her own wand, casting her grizzly bear Patronus by focusing on the memory of the first smile Draco had given her as a baby.

“Find my sons,” she instructed the bear as it materialized next to her and tilted its head back in inquiry. “Tell them to come to my quarters at once.”

The bear nodded and shuffled out through the wall. Narcissa stepped back and closed her eyes for a moment, softly breathing through her nose. There was enough time for her to prevent Moody from doing anything to her sons. She would hang onto that. She would not speculate on what the small device might be, because she had no way of knowing. She wanted her sons with her to face it when it came, however.

Harry was the first to reach her quarters, slipping in through the door like a shadow. After a glance at her face, he sat down to sharpen his knives. Narcissa smiled. Harry still had the obsessive curiosity he’d exhibited as a child, but he was better about waiting to fulfill it.

“Mother, what is it?” Draco held the door open with one hand, his head tilted a little with the curiosity that Harry had waited to express shining in his eyes. “Only Moody is leaving, and I was going to make sure he actually did leave Hogwarts.”

“I saw him with a weapon, or at least something that might be a weapon,” Narcissa answered briefly, standing. “I want you to remain at my side while _I_ make sure he is escorted out of the castle.’

Draco blinked, nodded, and fell into line behind her. Harry stood up and tucked the sharpened knives in his belt. “What did the weapon look like?” he asked quietly.

“A small crystal ball with a stirring rod positioned as rising out of it at an angle.” Narcissa nodded when Harry blinked at her. “Yes, I don’t know what it is, either, and I want to find out.”

“Yes, Mother.”

Her sons stayed close behind as Narcissa walked with swift steps down the main staircase towards the entrance hall. It seemed that she, Harry, and Draco weren’t the only ones who wanted to make sure Moody actually left. A small group of Hufflepuffs, Susan Bones prominent among them, were standing at the top of the steps down to their common room, and some Slytherins whose parents had fought alongside Lucius lingered near the doors.

Moody stumped into view and paused as he saw them, staring with narrowed eyes. Still, Narcissa believed that he might have walked out the doors and gone about his newly- circumscribed life if his attention hadn’t landed on Narcissa.

“ _You._ ” His lips pulled back from his teeth like a rabid dog, but he didn’t immediately move towards her. And Narcissa had never seen a rabid dog so alive with hatred. “You’ll pay for this.”

“I believe that I already have, with threats against me,” Narcissa said in a bored tone. She didn’t know if it was possible to incite Moody to destroy himself more than he already was, but the way she stood, with her hands tucked in her sleeves and her fingers not far from her wand, would serve her either way. “Leave now, Professor Moody. I look forward to not having to call you by that title.”

“You’ll pay.”

“Your monologue is boring compared to some I’ve heard from Dark wizards, I will have you know.”

Moody said nothing, standing still in a way that Narcissa recognized as being bound by rage so deep it was painful. Narcissa raised her own brows and began to turn away.

“ _You admitted that you know Dark wizards!”_ Moody bellowed, and Narcissa whipped back around in time to see him take out the crystal ball pierced by the stirring rod, as it still looked like, and heave the thing at her.

Narcissa didn’t want it to fall or hit her, and she didn’t want it to endanger her students crowded into the entrance hall, either. She whipped her wand and conjured a flexible net, which stretched in front of her, caught the weapon, wrapped around it, and bowled it softly to the floor, all in less time than it had taken Moody to toss it at her in the first place.

Moody returned to his gaping.

“I don’t know exactly what the thing was,” Narcissa said, lowering her wand so it pointed safely downwards. The whole point was to show that she was distant from Moody and not threatening him in return. “But I assume you meant it to hit me? Which makes it a threat. Tsk, tsk, Professor Moody. Apparently you find it hard to learn.”

“ _Alastor,”_ said a voice that hissed around and between the stairs, and Minerva strode out of the Great Hall to face him.

Moody looked at her, and his voice was uncertain when he spoke, as if he had finally begun to realize something other than his hatred of Narcissa. “She admitted to knowing Dark wizards.”

“Having heard them speak is hardly knowing them.” Minerva turned her wand in a circle, and three cat Patronuses sprang into being next to her, all of their glowing eyes fixed on Moody. “You have proven yourself a threat to enough people enough times in this school, Alastor Moody. Leave, or you will be escorted out.”

“Have you thought to ask her _why_ she’s heard them speak?”

“ _Leave,_ ” Minerva said, voice on the edge of a yowl, and the Patronuses yowled with her and spread out, stalking Moody from three sides of a square.

Moody huffed and went out. Narcissa tilted her head and watched him go, delicately enjoying the frustrated glare he gave over his shoulder.

“In the meantime, Professor Malfoy,” Minerva went on, and Narcissa turned back to see her holding her hand out, “I’ll take that weapon that Alastor was foolish enough to hurl at you.”

“Let me simply free it from the net,” said Narcissa equably. While she would have liked to keep it and examine it for herself, she did trust Minerva to share any pertinent information she found. And there was a chance that it had been enspelled to react badly to examination. Narcissa would certainly do that if _she_ lost her mind enough to throw crystal weapons at people in public.

Or to create a weapon out of crystal and glass in the first place, Narcissa admitted, as she floated the net over to Minerva’s waiting grasp, a piece of silk instead of her bare hands. She really couldn’t tell what the damn thing was made of. It glowed and seemed more fragile than ever, glistening like a raindrop, as Minerva wrapped it up.

“Mother?”

Narcissa glanced over her shoulder, and found Draco reaching towards her with a stunned look on his face. Harry shouted at the same time, and Narcissa wondered why he seemed to be screaming for her. She was right here.

Or so she had been. Until she abruptly thinned and the light in the entrance hall dimmed, and she found her essence sucked into the crystal weapon Minerva was holding.

*

Narcissa looked around at the faceted crystal, and the distorted reflections of gigantic faces bending down from above, and sighed.

“This is getting entirely too common,” she murmured, before she turned around and snapped out her hand. Her wand flew into it. Narcissa nodded. She had heard of traps like this, invented by wizards with too much time on their hands. Movement and gestures inside the glass were merely an effort of will.

Well, Narcissa was tired of enemies who attempted to keep her from doing what she wanted to do and pin her down in impossible situations. Moody was more annoying even than Voldemort, who was at least currently starving to death somewhere Narcissa couldn’t see him.

Hands pounded on the glass. Narcissa glanced up and determined that they seemed to belong to Draco. She frowned and shook her head, although she might be too tiny for them to see the gesture. What had she _taught_ her sons? Calm and grace under pressure.

Although, admittedly, seeing their mother sucked into a crystal ball that had mated with a stirring rod might be too much pressure for the moment.

Narcissa cast a _Lumos_ , and was pleased to see that her magic at least responded in a normal fashion. She walked slowly around the globe, tilting her head back and forth so she could see in all directions. It appeared to be mostly facets, the cool slant of the stirring rod, and here and there a glint of the magic that was probably keeping her imprisoned.

No, wait. The glints were in the air itself, not the crystal. Narcissa leaned closer, and a second later nodded in satisfaction. Yes, the glints were the ones she had seen in the crystal when Moody was examining it in his quarters. They hadn’t disappeared, as Narcissa had assumed they had, when he’d thrown it at her.

That meant the crystal wasn’t a single flawless prison, and _that_ meant Narcissa had a means to break it apart from the inside. Single constructions, whether of crystal, glass, or stone, were always harder to crack than those that had a join or seam.

Narcissa closed her eyes to shut out the sight of the gigantic faces from above and the pounding hands, and instead channeled her magic through her wand. In a few seconds, light was blazing from her wand tip.

She thought she heard a distorted voice asking what she was doing, but she ignored it for now. They couldn’t help her from the outside, anyway, at least not if Moody’s trap was constructed anything like the ones she was more familiar with.

When Narcissa opened her eyes again, the sparks were hovering near her wand tip, drawn by the magic. Narcissa released the spell, and watched how the magic dissipated into them, rather than striking anything or making a difference.

Narcissa smiled. The prison functioned the way she thought it did, then. The sparks were supposed to ensure the trap held by absorbing any magic that was cast inside it. So Narcissa could cast any spell, and it would only make her prison grow stronger and smoother.

At least, that was the way it was _supposed_ to work.

Narcissa spent a moment breathing carefully, and letting any thought of Moody or her sons slide off her own mental defenses, because they would only get in the way of what she was trying to do. Then she reared back a little, wand in her hand, and cast as much magic as she could through it, all at once, an unfocused blast of power.

At the same moment, she shifted into her Animagus form.

The world around her blurred and shook, as if someone was tossing the crystal from hand to hand. Narcissa calmly held on in the middle of it. This was exactly what the theory said should happen, and she was not going to panic.

The sparkles danced around her, trying to absorb the magic—

And failing. Then they clustered together, and Narcissa, her eyes narrowed so that she could barely see out of them, on purpose, saw bright cracks racing across them. It reminded her of one of Harry’s memories of the Muggle telly that she had seen.

The world around her shattered with a roar. Narcissa spilled to the floor, changing to human as she moved. If someone asked her about a possible bear form later, she would explain that she had manifested her thoughts as well as her magic inside the prison, and it might have made her _appear_ as a bear for a few moments.

As she stood back up, accepting Draco’s embrace from the front and Harry’s from the side, she briefly caught Minerva’s eye. Here might be someone who would not believe the tale of a bear thought-form. But Narcissa only smiled at her blandly and moved on, one arm around each of her sons.

“How did you _do_ that?” Susan Bones was staring at her in wonder, which Narcissa had to admit was flattering. Hannah Abbott, hovering behind her, stared, too, but looked away with a scowl when Narcissa caught her eye.

“The crystal was meant to contain Dark Arts, but the spells I cast to escape were not Dark, and neither am I purely a Dark witch,” Narcissa explained with a small shake of her hair that let it down around her. She let go of Harry long enough to comb her fingers through some tangles in it. “The prison couldn’t contain someone who doesn’t have a corrupted core.”

“So Moody underestimated you,” Minerva said, holding Narcissa’s gaze. Narcissa gazed back in unconcern. Minerva would not be so foolish as to try to make her register as an Animagus or the like. They had an understanding.

“Yes. And intended to trap and assault me. I think,” Narcissa added musingly, “that I do want him arrested.”

“I’ll contact the Aurors at once.” Minerva turned as if she was going to sweep away, then paused and looked over her shoulder. “Could you come with me, Professor Malfoy? Your perspective and personal report will be necessary for the Aurors, of course.”

Narcissa smiled a little, hugged Draco one more time, and then gently put both her sons aside so she could climb up the stairs behind Minerva. “Of course, Headmistress.”

Minerva kept as sharp an eye out for students as Narcissa did, which meant they were swiftly out of sight of them and nearly to her office. Minerva gave her a measured glance then. “Did I see what I thought I saw?”

“I’m sorry, Headmistress, but I’m unable to answer that. I would _never_ use my Legilimency without permission.”

Minerva’s mouth twitched hard, but she kept her expression placid as she nodded. “Then you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“Well, perhaps if you phrased it more clearly, Headmistress? I admit my head is ringing with the effort of breaking out of that prison.”

Minerva’s eyes narrowed in true uncertainty, which was just the way Narcissa liked it. Then they were riding the moving staircase up behind the gargoyle, and Minerva said, with a deep sigh, “You’re an unregistered grizzly Animagus.”

“That is perhaps something people would say about me.”

Minerva opened her office door and sat down more smoothly behind her desk than Narcissa would have thought possible. Her hands folded on top of the desk and she gave Narcissa a long, long look. “If I tried to fight you about this or insist that you register…”

“It would be unfortunate.” Narcissa kept her face grave and her eyes direct. “It might violate that understanding that I was sure we had between us.”

“I know it would.” Minerva drummed her fingers on the desk for a moment. “It is only that it looks bad if you are performing something illegal while also asking that Alastor be arrested.”

“No matter what I might do in my personal life, what he did is still illegal,” Narcissa pointed out peaceably. “And the crime that you are implying I have committed is victimless except perhaps for the person it involves, if they become trapped in the process. I assure you that I am not trapped.”

“And if I pressed…”

“It would be unfortunate.”

After a moment, Minerva gave a short nod, and then turned to throw Floo powder into the fire. “Minister for Magic’s office!”

Narcissa smiled at her back. Yes, she was glad they would preserve their excellent understanding.


	8. Narcissa's Tactics

“Somehow I find myself continually dealing with you,” Scrimgeour told Narcissa as she settled into the chair across from his desk.

“Well, your retired Aurors do continue to trouble me,” Narcissa murmured, lowering her eyes and focusing them on her hands as she smoothed down her robes over her knees. “There would be no reason for me to appear here if not for Auror Moody.”

And that was nearly the truth. Narcissa’s activities to take down the Ministry didn’t require her presence in Scrimgeour’s office, after all.

“He’s not my Auror,” Scrimgeour began, then sighed and stopped speaking. “Well. At least I counseled that he should retire long past the point where he was retained by Fudge and Bagnold. And at least I told Minerva that she should find some other Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.”

“Now, she will have to,” Narcissa said. She did in fact have a solution in mind for Minerva’s problem, but she wasn’t about to offer it unless Minerva approached her. The Headmistress had had enough strains to the excellent understanding between them lately.

“True enough.” Scrimgeour folded his hands in front of him. “I heard you speak of suing the whole Ministry, or at least the whole Auror Department. I would counsel you against that, Professor Malfoy. It wasn’t us either giving Moody the authority to teach at Hogwarts or the authority to get away with actions against you, after all.”

“It was the power structure behind him that made him think he could get away with it for as long as he did.” Narcissa raised her eyes from her knees, and rejoiced in the way Scrimgeour flinched back from her. “I am told that even the Aurors who came to arrest him moved reluctantly.”

“Professor Malfoy—”

“And his prejudices towards the Dark Arts and Dark wizards are shared by plenty of other Aurors,” Narcissa went on relentlessly.

“Professor Malfoy—”

“I do not feel safe at Hogwarts without some kind of guarantee that Aurors who try something like this will suffer in the future,” Narcissa said, and cast her eyes down again and clasped her hands tighter until the knuckles turned white.

Scrimgeour sighed like Draco did when Narcissa had forbidden him to have purely sweets for breakfast as a child. “Professor Malfoy, I’ll do what I can, but you have to know that I can’t upend the whole power structure of the Aurors overnight.”

“If it’s serious enough, then you could.” Narcissa raised her eyes and assumed an angelic expression. “You would do it if the public safety was in danger, wouldn’t you?”

“There is no indication of that, though, since Moody has been arrested and hasn’t been working as a public Auror for years in any case.” Scrimgeour had leaned back in his chair and laid his hand on the tip of his wand projecting beyond his sleeve.

“Then I suppose I must concede to an argument my husband made that I was reluctant to pay attention to,” Narcissa said, and smoothed down her robes again.

“What argument is that, Professor Malfoy?”

Scrimgeour already looked as though he knew he would regret asking. Narcissa smiled at him. “Why, that the Ministry is prejudiced against Dark wizards in much the same way that Moody is and encourages those prejudices instead of fighting against them as they should.”

The Minister flushed. “Professor Malfoy—”

“After all,” Narcissa continued thoughtfully, “you would be speaking reassurances to anyone involved if Moody had targeted a Light witch, or if his rhetoric could be interpreted that way. You apologize immediately whenever any Ministry official says something that could be interpreted as supporting the Dark. And usually, you sack that person. Why are you not interested in doing more about Moody, I wonder?”

“He’s been _arrested_. What more do you want?”

“The public apology, so that I might reassure my family and certain students that we are treated as equal to Light wizards, would be appropriate.”

Scrimgeour appeared to be wrestling with himself. Narcissa waited. The man was, politically, no fool. He couldn’t foresee all the consequences that Narcissa had spent months planning for and laying the groundwork for, but he could at least understand that the Wizengamot wouldn’t like him doing this. Some people would hold him as weak for it.

But Narcissa was in his office, and they weren’t.

“Fine,” Scrimgeour conceded through his teeth. “Would you also like us to revise the arrests that Moody made when he was an Auror and see if any of them were motivated by his paranoia instead of—truth?”

That was something Narcissa had _not_ foreseen, and she bit her lip to avoid laughing. She looked down with some more mock demureness. “That would, of course, be nice, Minister. And politic, I think.”

“Not as politic as you think, Professor Malfoy. You’re stirring up resentment if you do this that could easily be used against you. I’m not saying this as a threat. I’m just begging you to understand.”

Narcissa just smiled at him. In truth, the resentment would congeal and turn against Scrimgeour, for being the one who was wasting Wizengamot time—as they would see it—with this investigation when Moody had already been arrested. And if he couldn’t see that, why, he was not as foresighted as an ally of the Malfoys needed to be.

Scrimgeour finally sighed and turned around to scratch out a few words on a parchment sitting to the side of his desk. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Professor. And that your political instincts are as good as some people told me they were,” he added in a mutter that Narcissa probably wasn’t supposed to hear.

 _How sad for him that I did,_ Narcissa thought idly as she stood up and nodded to him. “Trust me, Minister, in matters such as these, they are very nearly flawless.”

Scrimgeour gave her a gloomy look. He must not think “nearly flawless” was enough. Narcissa patted his cheek and swept out of the room.

She wouldn’t claim perfection, because no one could. She had had to slit her throat in the last month to destroy a werewolf army, which alone deprived her of that appellation.

But as long as the burdens of her mistakes fell on others, then she thought she might claim the “nearly.”

*

“I’m dubious about this,” Minerva said, but she was muttering the words in a low voice as they stood by the fireplace in her office, waiting.

Narcissa smiled at the mantel and said nothing. In truth, she knew that Minerva would have liked nothing better than to hire some other Auror from the Ministry to be the Defense teacher. But the students themselves had led the protests at the notion, because the Ministry had wanted to send someone who had retired, the way Moody had, and the students evidently wouldn’t feel safe with someone like that

“What if he turned out the way Moody did?” Susan Bones had demanded, her eyes bright with a righteous fire Narcissa enjoyed seeing from the outside. She would never feel it herself, but she could admire it from a distance.

So Minerva had been forced to accept Narcissa’s suggestion of a replacement for Moody, and now they were waiting.

The fire turned green then, and Narcissa spun towards it. For once, she wasn’t inclined to hide the happiness that flooded her. She needed to see him, wanted to welcome him, and was in the perfect place to step forwards and take hold of Lucius’s hands as he came out of the fire.

“Husband,” she said, and tipped her head in so that she could lay her lips against his. Lucius’s hand tightened for a moment in her hair. Narcissa stepped back so that he could release the hold naturally, and turned him around with a hand on his arm. “Of course you know Headmistress Minerva McGonagall.”

“Mr. Malfoy.” Minerva looked as if she wished she was in cat form at the moment, so she could lash her tail. “I can’t be as pleased to welcome you to your post as Defense Against the Dark Arts professor as your wife is. I trust that you understand.”

“Perfectly, Headmistress,” said Lucius. Not even the ghost of a smile crossed his face. “You needed someone who had knowledge of the Dark Arts and the school’s procedures and could protect children. I can certainly do that.”

“ _Protect_ them?”

Lucius met the gaze with a calm that would have been impossible for him when he still bore the Dark Mark. Narcissa knew much more, now, about how it warped the mind and personality of the person who carried it. “I know that my record from the last war is not impeccable. But I have never harmed a child.”

“Teenagers,” Minerva said between her teeth. Narcissa was impressed she managed the words. “Some of the people you fought and _killed_ were teenagers.”

“Still, of age. Seventeen.” Lucius remained calmly alert, as if he was waiting for Minerva to say something specific he could object to. But she turned around and yanked the contract Lucius would sign off the desk with such force that several pages of it flew out of order.

“Allow me,” Narcissa murmured. She waved her wand, and the pages of the contract flew back into the correct order. Minerva gave her a narrow, suspicious glance. She probably wanted to know where Narcissa had got the spell, which wasn’t commonly taught at Hogwarts.

Narcissa smiled and admitted nothing.

“Your contract, Mr. Malfoy.” Minerva sighed under her breath as she watched Lucius sign. “It will be somewhat confusing at first to have two ‘Professor Malfoys’ to refer to, but we’ve dealt with married couples who shared the same surname before. We’ll get used to it.”

There was nothing to be said to that, a mere minor complaint from a defeated arguer, so Narcissa smiled again and swept Lucius out of the office. He walked next to her with a quiet smile on his face, which changed to a broader one as they emerged from behind the gargoyle and into a corridor of the school proper.

“It seems like forever since I’ve been here,” he said softly, as he lifted his eyes to the ceiling and ignored the students passing them who stared a little. “I can’t believe that I never visited the school in my capacity as a governor more than once or twice. What was I thinking?”

“Nothing good,” Narcissa said, and tucked her hand under his elbow. “You weren’t always thinking clearly.”

Lucius nodded. He had told her that trying to revisit some of the decisions he had made under the Dark Mark had been like recalling decisions made in a dream. “Well, that’s been cleared up now, thanks to my darling wife.”

“Indeed.” Narcissa nodded to Susan Bones, who was giving them a faintly horrified glance, and swept past towards the stairs that led to the Defense classroom. “I’ll show you the place where Moody taught, although I’m unsure if you’ll want to use it.”

“Yes, he may have placed some traps there.” Lucius aimed his wand at the doorway as they arrived, and blew out his breath as several white sparks lit up around it and in the walls. “Didn’t he care that there would be _children_ coming here?” he muttered.

“No, unfortunately.” Narcissa stood back and watched him disarm the traps with wide flexes of his wrist. “He probably thought that the pure of heart and mind wouldn’t be hurt. There are some Light spells like that.”

“Only if the ‘pure of heart and mind’ matches the picture in the mind of the caster.”

“That, too.”

Lucius had disarmed at least five traps before the first student came up the stairs. It was Pansy Parkinson, who stared slightly with her mouth open. Then she swallowed and said, “Mr. Malfoy is going to be our new Defense teacher, Professor Malfoy?”

“Yes.” Narcissa nodded slightly to the girl. She hadn’t joined in some of the nonsense the Slytherins had had about declaring for Voldemort in the face of all common sense. On the other hand, neither had she done anything that would show she was indisputably on Draco’s, or Harry’s, side. “I told the Minister that I wanted to feel safe from purely Light wizards in the castle, and of course other students objected when they offered to send a second retired Auror.”

Parkinson’s shoulders began to shake in near-silence. Then she said, “I look forward to your classes, sir.”

“Likewise to you as a student, Miss Parkinson,” Lucius said, and shot a glance at Narcissa as Parkinson went down the stairs again. “That many students managed the scores to be in NEWT Defense?”

“They had to switch to self-study in many cases, but yes.” Narcissa shrugged a little. “And Idunna, who taught last year, lowered her requirements to an Acceptable because she wanted to teach as many of them as possible.”

Lucius grunted a little and banished something that made a noise like a firework as it disappeared. “I can’t promise that all of them will pass the NEWT, especially with a mid-year change like this.”

“Lucius.” Narcissa leaned on his shoulder and waited until he looked at her. Then she let her hand stray along his jaw and watched his eyes dilate a bit. _Some_ things hadn’t changed with the removal of the Dark Mark, no matter what else had. “I do want more of our students to do well on the NEWT exams, but that’s not the main reason you’re here.”

He nodded after a second and kissed her palm. “Thank you for reminding me of what is important, my love.”

Narcissa stepped back with a smile. “A service I would offer more often if more people asked me for it.”

*

“Having our father as a professor is bloody _weird._ ”

“Stranger than having your mother as one?” Narcissa looked up with a faint smile as Harry hurled himself into the chair across from her. He was holding the Defense book that Lucius had ordered for the class and staring at it with a baffled expression.

“Yes, actually! You’ve been here a few years! I’ve got bloody _used_ to you!” Harry waved the book around. “He had us read the first chapter, and then he went through and discussed everything the chapter left out and why we shouldn’t always trust experts! Even though _he’s_ an expert! And one of the people he quoted was a Light wizard!”

“Your father has always wanted to be someone who appreciated wisdom no matter where it was found.”

Harry squinted at her. “ _Wanted_ to be, you said.”

Narcissa sighed with a slight movement of her hands. “Well, it is true that in recent years, he could not always fulfill that ambition. But now that he has the chance, he has returned to it with a vengeance. Is it at least better than the classes where Moody sat around telling you his war stories?”

“Yes.” Harry looked as if he was trying to suppress the smile that crept up his face next, but he didn’t manage it. “And you should see the expressions of the people I think expected him to just quote Dark wizards. It’s funny.”

Narcissa nodded. “I imagine it would be. Simply keep your eyes on your goals, however. You know that your father will teach you as well as he can, but the lessons that you use in the future will probably be mine.”

“You’ve taken my place as far as killing Voldemort goes, haven’t you?”

“I suspect the prophecy only said that it had to be you in the first place because of the Horcrux within you.” Narcissa somewhat mourned the fact that she had burned Dumbledore to death in phoenix fire. She would have given him a much slower death if she had known at the time what a Horcrux was and that he was aware of the one in Harry’s scar. “Now that that is gone, anyone could kill him who knows about the Horcruxes and how to deprive him of them.”

“What are we going to do next, Mother?”

“You are going to concentrate on giving Draco every happiness, defending yourself if someone attacks you, and getting excellent marks on your NEWT exams.”

“I meant what _you’re_ going to do next about him, Mother.”

Narcissa smiled indulgently at Harry. “I know that you did. And I also know that you don’t need to worry about that, which means I can keep my plans to myself so that you don’t.”

Harry blinked. “You think I would get in the way if you told me what you plan to do?”

“No. As I said, my aim is preventing your mental distress.”

“Worrying about this will _give_ me some mental distress, Mother.”

“I plan to destroy his remaining Horcrux and starve him to death. Then we can live happily ever after.”

“And the Ministry?” Harry cocked his head as he looked at her, his brow slightly furrowed.

“I will destroy it and replace it with something better.”

Harry thought about it, then shrugged. “Well, okay. As long as I know.”


	9. Triumph and Tragedy

“There have to be _some_ commonalities among the Horcruxes that would make them easier to search for.”

Narcissa caressed the welt on the corner of Lucius’s shoulder and sighed a little. “Yes, well, that might have been easier before they were moved from their original places. The diadem was in Hogwarts, and that was probably where it always was. But we don’t know where the cup rested before he gave it to Bellatrix, and Nagini was living and could accompany him…”

“We know that it’s probably a Founder’s artifact.”

Narcissa shook her head. “Everything I can find is either destroyed, clean, or accounted for.”

“Then perhaps it is something widely thought to be lost, the way Ravenclaw’s diadem was?”

Narcissa lay back, letting her hair coil around her husband’s throat. Lucius shook in remembered pleasure. Narcissa smiled, but directed her smile at the ceiling more than him. “I still have no idea what it could be. Hundreds of authors have speculated on what the Founders left behind and have much power those objects have, but all of them concentrate on the same small group of them. And I don’t think books exist on the Founders’ artifacts that I haven’t read.”

“Hmm.” Lucius was silent for a moment. “What about artifacts that have a connection to _his_ past?”

“That is a thought,” Narcissa said. “Of course, most of them, like the diadem, don’t, but the diary did. Thank you, husband. You have given me something to look into.” She rolled over and met his eyes. “And you can ask anything you want from me as a reward.”

“Please,” Lucius whispered.

Narcissa smiled and stood from the bed, beckoning him to kneel at her feet.

*

Narcissa nodded to the Wizengamot members who turned to look at her as she strode into the courtroom. She had learned to look natural in all kinds of settings, even ones like this, where she wore rich purple robes and had her hair gleaming almost white as it fell around her ears in artificial locks and ringlets. She took a seat in the small polished wooden gallery for visitors and waited.

Scrimgeour gave her a sour grimace before he stood up in front of the assembled Wizengamot members. Narcissa would have shaken her head if that was in the plans. The man just made himself look weaker and weaker, as if it was Narcissa’s idea and not his that she was here.

Which it was, but he shouldn’t advertise it. Truly, the man was too honest to survive as Minister.

“Thank you for assembling at the last minute, honored Wizengamot.” Unlike most of the Ministers Narcissa had watched, Scrimgeour wanted to stand on his own two legs on the floor instead of sitting in the gallery himself and drawing attention that way. “We are investigating the arrests made by former Auror Alaster Moody—”

“I still don’t understand _why_ ,” interrupted an older witch in acid-green robes with a curled ear trumpet that reminded Narcissa of a sick unicorn’s horn. That trumpet was effective in identifying her: Hebe Jackson, one of the few half-blood members. “What did he ever do that was so wrong?”

“Used Dark magic within Hogwarts,” said Griselda Marchbanks, with a wave of a hand that had iron rings on it. “I understand that perfectly. But do we have to revise _all_ the arrests he made, Rufus?”

Scrimgeour gave another too-honest grimace again. “I’m afraid so. It seems that he took the license to use Dark Arts granted to Aurors during the war with You-Know-Who far more liberally than I ever thought he did.”

“But _how_?” Marchbanks was rocking back and forth in her seat, her foot tapping. Narcissa listened to the tapping and shook her head. From the sound, Marchbanks was wearing slippers. How standards had declined in the Wizengamot since Cousin Orion’s day. “ _How_ did he use it?”

“He used a Dark magic artifact to imprison a fellow professor of Hogwarts. It might have trapped her forever if she hadn’t known how to fight her way out of it.”

“This is the incident with the Malfoy woman?” Jackson waited until Scrimgeour nodded. “Well, maybe we would be better _off_ if she’d remained trapped.”

Narcissa sighed. She hoped that she wouldn’t be forced to remind them she was here. She would prefer to startle them with that later, when the collapse of the Ministry was progressing.

“How can you say that, Hebe?” cried out Holland Bulstrode, who had hired Narcissa years ago to get rid of an inconvenient secret. It remained the only half-Kneazle assassination Narcissa had ever performed. “Mrs. Malfoy didn’t deserve to be trapped like that!”

And they were off, wrangling back and forth over old grudges, mostly. Narcissa shook her head again. No wonder wizarding Britain’s government was so inefficient. They couldn’t keep their minds on a topic from one moment to the next.

Scrimgeour was the one who brought back some sense of decorum, casting the Firework Charm that made a harmless gout of noise and light rise from the floor. Narcissa had used that charm when Draco was three and not yet ready for the real thing. “If you could _concentrate,_ ladies and gentlemen,” Scrimgeour said grimly as the Wizengamot members retook their seats and gave him stares of baffled offense. “We are here to talk about Auror Moody.”

“ _Former_ Auror Moody. I can’t believe that he’s even the Ministry’s problem anymore!”

Narcissa smiled. She had been waiting for something like that, and the small brooch hanging on her necklace would finally have good material for the Recording Charm.

It was even better material than Narcissa had expected, and she departed the Wizengamot session with a bright smile on her face. Strike two would come tomorrow.

*

Narcissa leaned back in her seat and nodded slowly. It seemed that “Marvolo” was the key that would unlock what she was looking for. That had been the diary spirit’s middle name, and it was not as common a wizarding name as Narcissa had first feared it might be. In fact, the only pure-bloods who had used it in recent history were the Gaunts, who had a habit of naming their children things that began with M.

And she only had to investigate more thoroughly where the Gaunts had lived. It seemed that they had lost their manor centuries ago, about the time they began practicing incest and all the other pure-blood families had stopped speaking to them. (Even the Blacks, somewhat to Narcissa’s surprise, but then she had learned that the Gaunts had practiced _sibling_ marriage. That was a line too far. The Blacks considered cousin marriage the height of good taste in public. You should only fuck your brother or sister under the sheets at night, with the lights off).

“Mother! Mother!”

Narcissa flowed smoothly to her feet, wand in her hand and various weapons she had installed in the corners of her quarters vibrated in violence. They would be needed when one of her children burst in shouting in that tone.

But then she realized it was Harry, and there was laughter behind his voice, and he had no weapons drawn. Narcissa sat down and smiled back at him. “What is it?”

“Did _you_ do this?” Harry asked, and handed her what looked like an absurdly thick sheaf of paper. When she took it, Narcissa realized that the _Daily Prophet_ had published a special edition, the biggest one she had ever seen.

 _Well, of course, they needed extra paper to hold all that news,_ she thought half-complacently, and turned to the front page.

_RUFUS SCRIMGEOUR: PROPONENT OF THREESOMES?_

Narcissa sniffed. They had chosen to lead with the _least_ interesting blackmail she’d dug up or bought about each Wizengamot member and high Ministry official and decided to release today. Personally, she’d thought the Burkes’ penchant for bestiality would have drawn more eyes.

“But how did you get it all coordinated at once?” Harry was grinning at her again, looking as if he would hop from foot to foot in a moment. She had once thought she would have to train that childish exuberance out of him, but was glad it had not been necessary. He never let it interfere with his work. “How did you convince them to _print_ it?”

Narcissa smiled. “I found the people who had it to sell, or who did not realize what they had and needed money. And where pressure can be brought to bear in one direction, it can be brought to bear in another.”

Harry sighed and flopped back on the couch behind him, with one of those lightning-fast changes of mood that had bewildered Lucius so much when Draco was younger. “I don’t think I’ll ever be as good as you.”

“You are much younger than me and you received a kinder upbringing than I did once you were eleven. Give yourself time, Harry.”

“Did they?”

“Did who what?”

“Did—your parents abuse you?” Harry was asking with his eyes fixed on the fire, his foot tapping nervously in front of him. Narcissa could understand why. There would be many reasons he would be uncomfortable asking that question.

“Ah.” Narcissa considered that, her fingers drumming for a moment on the table. “I did not have the happiest childhood, Harry, but nothing like what you endured with the Dursleys.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Narcissa smiled a little. _I only have myself to blame if he’s turning the training he received back on me._ “You’re right, it’s not,” she agreed gently. “But I was given a choice to embrace the discipline. Would you say that I have abused you because I trained you?”

“ _No_. of course not! But they wanted you to do something else first, didn’t they?”

“Yes, they wanted me to be quiet and biddable.”

Harry gawked at her for a second, as if he literally could not imagine that. Narcissa reached out and gently closed his mouth.

Harry managed to recover long enough to whisper, “Did you?”

“No, of course not. But it took several years for my parents to realize that I would never fulfill their dreams for me.”

“That isn’t really an answer, either.”

“I know, but those are memories that I do not wish to share with you. They are not happy, but they need cast no tarnish on our victory this day, or on the training that you embraced of your own free will—or on your feeling for Sirius. He did not know, and my family did not live in Grimmauld Place.”

From the way Harry started, she had caught onto exactly why Harry was worried about this. He shook his head and gave her a faint, exasperated smile. “You’re far too good at guessing what’s underneath my questions. I’m worried for _you_ , too, you know.”

“I know that.” And Narcissa could acknowledge that if she did not want her sons’ worry, she should not have cut her own throat while facing a werewolf army. She bent down to kiss his forehead. “This is still a day of triumph for us. Go out and show your classmates that.”

Harry grinned at her again, touched her wrist with fingers that Narcissa knew wanted to grip harder than he let them, and shot out the door like a comet. Narcissa turned back to the paper.

At least they had put the bestiality story on page two.

*

“ _But why_?”

Minerva’s voice was taut and strained in the way that the tail of a mouse caught under her claws might be. Narcissa tilted her head a little as she considered the woman. “You have no proof that it was me. The _Prophet_ sometimes prints salacious stories, you know.”

“But not ones that target every single member of the Wizengamot except for Malfoy allies!” Minerva swung around. “I _know_ it was you!”

“Certainty is a rare and dangerous thing,” Narcissa said mildly. “And I assure you, there are stories that mention embarrassing things about the Goyles, the Burkes, and others who have long been our friends.”

Minerva sat down, hard, in the chair behind her desk, and closed her eyes. “I wish I know what you were doing,” she whispered.

“You thought you knew, a moment ago.”

Minerva ignored her interjection, and kept her eyes closed. “I’m charged with the protection of the school and the students, and that means keeping an eye on politics. And I can’t tell _what_ you’re doing. I can’t even tell if it’s something I should be moving to counter.”

Narcissa nodded. “I can see why that would be confusing.”

“You will still not _tell_ me.”

“But we have an excellent understanding. I have already taken actions that would jeopardize that excellent understanding. Why do so again?”

Minerva opened her eyes with a slow, despairing grimace. “Then that means that you _did_ cause this, and you’re plotting—what? The destruction of the Wizengamot? Deposing another Minister, even though this one has done nothing wrong but be reluctant to investigate Alastor Moody? Getting some kind of obscure revenge for Dark families?”

That last one startled Narcissa into laughing. “Of course not. I’ve defended my family against Dark wizards as well as Light ones.”

Minerva sighed and buried her head in her hands. “But what am I to _do_?”

“Reassure students if they come to you in a panic. Take care of Hogwarts. Lead. Nothing should change here.”

Minerva stared at her with narrowed eyes. “ _Should_ is not _will_.”

“Of course not, but it’s as much certainty as we get in this world,” Narcissa said, and stood. “More certainty than some members of the Wizengamot have right now. And I think I hear someone knocking on the gargoyle’s head. You should probably let them in.”

Minerva’s glance changed. It was deep and wary and unimpressed now. “Probably a student from one of the families who will be affected by this. Did you think about that at all before you arranged for the publication of these articles?”

It seemed that Minerva wouldn’t be put off by Narcissa’s refusal to confirm. She spread her hands. “Did their mothers, fathers, cousins, and aunts think about their crimes and sexual indiscretions before they committed them?” she asked. “More to the point, did they think about _keeping_ them from people?”

“Sometimes you disgust me,” Minerva whispered.

Narcissa sighed and left the office, since she already knew that nothing would change there. She wished she could tell Minerva that this was the nature of the political game. Many of the families in the Wizengamot had played well for a long time, but that was part of the problem: they had let themselves get overconfident, had thought that because they had been on top for the last few generations, they would always be there.

_Were you abused?_

Narcissa’s mind returned to Harry’s question as she let the Tower’s moving steps carry her down. No, she hadn’t been. It had been a hard childhood in some ways, yes. But that was a gift of strength to her. She had never thought that the Blacks would remain on top forever, because she had seen how they were thrown down.

That had been one of the several reasons that she had been willing to accept the name Malfoy when she married Lucius. Let her leave behind the legacy of a family that had always been overconfident and reckless, and embrace the glory of a rising one, one that she could keep shining.

It was a pity that Minerva did not understand that.

*

Narcissa surveyed the paralyzed Aurors caught in her office by her traps the next morning, and slowly shook her head. _Honestly, Scrimgeour._

They had obviously been sent to arrest her, and had thought they would come into her office and ambush her; they had as obviously not known where her quarters actually were. Narcissa sighed. She had caught Scrimgeour in the net of blackmail because it was politics, but now the deeper wisdom of her decision had emerged. He could not be a good ally for her in the long term when he did something this self-destructive.

Narcissa spent a long moment searching the Aurors’ robes for the Portkeys that they would have, and then another moment casting the necessary charms. She tossed the Portkeys back at the Aurors, and watched as they vanished.

Scrimgeour would find them later in his office, covered in silver and green wrapping paper and with a bow occupying each mouth. Narcissa hoped he would be able to read the message, and grasp the not-excellent state of the understanding between them.

Otherwise, she would have to question her own past decision to think he was a good ally in the short term, either.


End file.
